Annotatable word processing?

December 10, 2008 3:02 PM

Wanted: software to annotate text. I would like to find software or an add-on to an open-source client that would (1) treat each paragraph as a separate object and (2) allow the user to add an annotation, long or short, to accompany that object. The annotation would be hidden or visible, as the user directs. I have seen software that allows for an accompanying annotation panel for an entire document, but I would want to see it on the paragraph level. Is there anything like that out there?
posted by megatherium to Computers & Internet (4 answers total)

Although I don't use either much, I think Word and Open Office both support attaching notes to specific ranges or locations in text.

I've seen things on the web that attempted to enable annotation on a per-paragraph basis, but to the best of my recollection, it was always pretty clunky.

Zotero? Apparently not, or at least I can't make it attach notes to parts of documents. Looks useful, though.

Amaya?
posted by brennen at 3:22 PM on December 10, 2008

NVivo or (I think--I've never actually used it) Atlas TI can do this in a sense, although I'm not sure how good they would be for display purposes. More on this sort of program here.
posted by col_pogo at 4:45 PM on December 10, 2008

WordPress can do exactly what you describe using the CommentPress theme (Unfortunately the if:book website is being reshuffled so this link doesn't workright now.)
posted by zota at 5:29 PM on December 10, 2008

CommentPress is pretty wacky-cool, but not really practical as far as I can tell. If the built-in Word/OpenOffice annotation features aren't enough, you want to might try a different service recently mentioned by the if:book people, Reframe It. There's also ShiftSpace, etc.
posted by dreamyshade at 7:45 PM on December 10, 2008