XML and Bibliographic “Micro-Content”
Earlier I posted an example of how xml markup can be used to encode meaning in bibliographic data. In the example I gave, I used it to attach metadata to a quoted excerpt from a work. This reflects my general interest in greatly enhancing annotation support in bibliographic systems.
How to apply to this to the world of GUIs? The new weblog system Syncato provides a hint, and Jon Udell gives an illustration of how one can use url-based xpath expressions to extract microcontent.
So what if instead of using such a system for posting on and querying a weblog, one used it to query and view bibliographic entries, complete with metadata enriched annotations? And what if the returned results themselves had hot-linked queries attached to particular information?
Say we have my earlier example, slightly modified to add additional markup:
<para>A <emphasis>paragraph</emphasis> with a <quote name="John Doe" name-id="doej" keywords="one two three">quote that includes <emphasis source="original">emphasis</emphasis></quote>.</para>
Notes:
A paragraph, with a quote that includes emphasis
[source: John Doe; emphasis in original].
The link on the source name above is non-functional, but you could imagine it contained an expression that allowed the user to click on the link and get all results for “John Doe,” which in this case might just be a note attached to a name record.
Now imagine extending this to author names, to keywords, etc., etc.
