scott said:
The ideal solution would be a tiny bit of automation (perhaps created by a student if techie stuff isn't your thing).
"tiny" is a very misleading term, i think. unless you can show me this "tiny" thing.
Then you could keep the annotations separate, and just add small markers to the original text.
um, keeping the annotations separate is a good idea. but requiring "small markers" in the original text is not. the text should remain unchanged, for many reasons.
Simple scripts could do things like: - format the annotations on their own - insert the annotations into the text, preferably with appropriate HTML wrapper that lets readers show/hide using CSS (style sheets) or JavaScript.
except what you have described is _far_ from "simple", as well as i can tell. do you have sample implementations?
As others have noted, HTML or the newer XHTML is ideal here.
"ideal"? i think not. indeed, to the direct contrary, i believe that heavy markup makes on-the-fly adding of annotations _extremely_ difficult. but, as i said, if you can show me some examples, ones that make it as simple as you make it sound, i am open to being convinced otherwise... -bowerbird