Re: Annotation mode

[Joe Corneli <jcorneli@planetmath.org>]

I've been working on a very sophisticated system for doing things like
this.  You can find it in CVS at http://www.nongnu.org/hdm/ under the
"scholium-system" subdirectory when the code is checked out.  It might
need a little hacking to get it to do everything you want; its
currently pre-release, but just barely.  (I'd be happy to accept
contributed code.)

If you want to start with something simpler, you could also take a
look at

 http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2005-07/msg00276.html




   I'm looking for a mode for annotating files without modifying the
   file's contents, so the anotations are stored separately from the
   actual files.

   The desired features:

   - I want to add textual annotations to a file while reading it. I'm
   thinking of hitting a key which pops up a window showing the existing
   annotation (if any) for the file. I can edit the annotation and when I
   close the window it is saved automatically.

   - When a global annotation mode is enabled the currently stored
   annotations are always shown for the current buffer.

   - I'd like a browser which shows the existing anotations with the
   corresponding file names, so that I don't have to open the actual files
   if I want to see their annotations. The annotations should be
   searchable. Preferably they could also be edited from the annotation
   browser.


   I tried to search with Google for a similar thing, but didn't find
   anything. Thought I asked here first, before starting hacking my own
   implementation.