Support/ScreenshotAnnotator

Basic annotation description

An annotation is a simple frame + text overlaid on a screenshot to make it easy to point out the area of focus in a screenshot.

Screenshot Annotator Requirements (Suggestions/Proposal)

• Two types of annotations
  1. Frame and text always visible. Typical usage: Short annotation text (e.g. just a number "1") overlaid next to the frame. Actual description of annotation is in the article itself.
  2. Frame always visible; text only visible when hovering. Typical usage: Long annotation text that would clutter the screenshot if always visible.
• A screenshot should be reusable on many articles, with or without annotations, so annotations can't be strictly tied to a screenshot.
• Because a screenshot can be used on more than one article, each screenshot should support more than one annotation group. For example, we could reuse an Options window screenshot and point out the specific pref the user should click in each article.
• It should be possible to reuse both a screenshot + annotation group in another article. For example, we might want to reuse a generic screenshot of the toolbar with an annotation that points out where the Location Bar is.
• Annotations should respect l10n, meaning:
  • If someone translates an article, the annotations for any image included should also be copied over.
• Annotations must be treated the same way as article edits, meaning they would have to be approved by reviewers before published. Otherwise we'll end up with spam and/or offending annotations.

Notes regarding possible way to localize annotations

Nelson Ko: We have a Google SoC student working on a screenshot annotation system for us: http://wiki.mozilla.org/Support/ScreenshotAnnotator but I was wondering if annotations could become translatable.

LPH: depends on how they store the data. best would probably to have it stored as part of the wiki page, otherwise the annotations need to have objectids to work with the tiki_translated_objects table

Nelson Ko: as XML as per http://www.fotonotes.net/ (haven't decided where exactly, i,e, in db or what)

LPH: but then you need additional tracking stuff

Nelson Ko: probably there will be a tiki_image_annotations table or something

LPH: the stuff I wrote is mostly specific to wiki pages because nothing else keeps a history, but if they keep revision history of their XML, the translation bit magic can be adapted

Nelson Ko: so history is necessary for translation system to work I suppose

LPH: otherwise you can't diff. However, with XML, it may be possible to add version data as attributes on the notes, but that could be a mess to manage depending on the type of content in there and the structure of the annotation XML, this could actually be a viable solution

Nelson Ko: http://www.fotonotes.net/fotonotexml.html

LPH: yep... if you add a version attribute on the content tag, there is something to do about this. Each region already has a unique identifier