Highlights, Notes, Comments, and Annotations

[AdamSobieski]

Hello. I would like to broach creating standard means of embedding highlights, notes, comments, and annotations inside of EPUB resources' OCF containers.

Software tools exist which can perform some or all of these functionalities and, with a standard means of embedding these data (highlights, notes, comments, and annotations) in EPUB resources, these data would be interoperable across devices and software tools.

In 2012, David Wood and Luke Roth discussed utilizing RDFa for these purposes.

I would like to broach, here, approaches where these data (highlights, notes, comments, and annotations) would be stored in EPUB container files separately from document content (XHTML resources) instead of approaches which require document modification. EPUB content, then, could be digitally signed while simultaneously being capable of being annotated in the ways under discussion.

EPUB resources could, e.g., using metadata, indicate whether end-users were permitted to make embedded highlights, notes, comments, or annotations.

We can consider multi-user scenarios where users would be collaborating with and sharing EPUB resources while making use of these features. For these scenarios, there would be a need for maintaining provenance data for these data (highlights, notes, comments, and annotations).

Thank you. Is there any interest in these features and in providing standard means for multiple end-users to highlight, note, comment, and annotate EPUB resources?