This is just one of many annotation system issues.

In-line Annotations

In-line annotations are ones that are visibly inserted into the middle of the original document. The following possibilities exist:

Not Supported

Many people will be happy with annotations that show up at the end of the document.

At Author Specified Anchor Points Only

The author can insert a whole bunch of anchor points to which in-line annotations can be attached. This is made easier if the author is using an HTML editor rather than doing it by hand. This is what the Cornell small group annotation experiment decided on.

Arbitrary Placement

Arbitrary placement requires no support from the original document author. The place can be specified as:

An Offset: The character offset from the beginning of the document. This is fragile if the author is permitted to change the annotations.
A Pattern: A character pattern is used to locate the in-line annotation insertion point. This is less fragile than the offset method, but it can still break.

What else is missing?

This file, version 1.3 of inline.html, was last updated at 21:14:27 on 95/09/15.