[wp-hackers] Idea for a GSoC project - Image annotation plugin

[Stephen Tigner]

Yeah, that looks like the perfect place to store the annotation metadata.
As for tagging using annotations, that could be possible, but I think
that would only be feasible to allow the post author to add such
annotations, since (I believe) readers/comnenters shouldn't be able to
change the tags on a post. I think that could be feasible, but would
likely require a different approach from the comments-based one I'm
taking.

After doing some research, poking at the database, and experimenting a
bit, it seems that all values in the comment_type are treated as
trackbacks/pingbacks by default. (Normal comments have that field
blank.) I'm going to keep digging, but does anyone know offhand if
this is something that can be handled on the backend (i.e. in a
plugin), or if its theme-dependent?

Also, I've been thinking about how to approach identifying which
annotations go with which image. One approach would be to base it on
the image id ("wp-image-X") that shows up in the class attribute for
each image that is uploaded to WP's internal "gallery" and then
embedded in a post. However, this only works if you are using that
built-in functionality. If, for instance, you are serving images from
another (sub)domain, and just embedding them with image tags, they
won't have those identifiers. So, the other idea I had was to hash the
image's URL and use that as an identifier. Why the full URL and not
just the filename? To avoid possible collisions when image files (that
can be completely different) have the same name, but different
locations. I was wondering about your thoughts on that approach. n.n

Sorry for the long email. ^^; Thanks in advance for your feedback!
-- Stephen


On Thu, Mar 25, 2010 at 9:15 PM, Alex Hempton-Smith
<hempsworth at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Take a look at comment meta which was recently added to WP, which is
> where you could save the annotation data.
>
> It would be interesting to see if you could tie in tags, so you could
> tag people or things in the photo, which would be added to the tags
> for that post perhaps..
>
> On Thursday, March 25, 2010, Stephen Tigner <stephen.tigner at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I have an idea for a GSoC project I wanted to get some feedback on.
>> What I'd like to do is create an image annotation plugin for Wordpress
>> using (http://blog.flipbit.co.uk/2009/03/jquery-image-annotation-plugin.html)
>> this jQuery image annotation plugin and AJAX.
>>
>> I was inspired by the implementation of this on dannychoo.com and
>> figure.fm (running on the Mirai Gaia platform), and wanted to bring
>> similar functionality to my Wordpress blogs.
>>
>> Basically, in that implementation, readers can leave annotations as
>> comments that reference specific sections of an image. Much better
>> than having to say things like, "Who's that guy third from the left in
>> the second row?" Instead, you can say, "Who is this?" and just put
>> that as an annotation to the image, where the annotation box on the
>> image is around the person in question.
>>
>> Now, as far as how the annotations are presented to the readers, there
>> are two scenarios that come to mind. One, which I've seen on some
>> sites, is to keep the annotations and comments completely separate.
>> The other is, like on Mirai Gaia, to make the annotations a special
>> kind of comment.
>>
>> I prefer the latter, because then the annotations aren't removed from
>> the conversation. Instead, they become part of it, as I feel they
>> should be, and can be replied to (and handled) just like other
>> comments.
>>
>> However, this brings up another question, as while there are post meta
>> and user meta tables, no such thing exists for comments. While I would
>> like to not have to add extra tables, it seems that to store the
>> relevant metadata about the annotation comments, a new table would be
>> required for this plugin. Does that sound reasonable?
>>
>> Also, I would like to give said comments a slightly different
>> presentation than normal comments. For instance, include a thumbnail
>> link back up to the particular image the annotation is for. I can
>> probably add a filter to the comment_text function for that. However,
>> to trigger that, I was thinking of adding an additional comment type
>> of "annotation," and I was wondering if doing so would break things.
>>
>> Sorry for the long-winded email, and thanks in advance. ^_^
>>
>> -- Stephen
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>
> --
> -- Alex  (Hempsworth)
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