Quote book in the clouds

We describe the concept of the contextual input interface for quotes. It will not be about those clouds that everyone thought about. Clouds are of the Heaven benchmark type, the 4th version of which was recently released (Fig. To the left) or the Laputa Sky Castle , and the quote box is an interface element such as flying islands. Life is warming on the surface of these islands, and they themselves can fly. In our case, move with the mouse. They are supported by stones, and we have contextual buttons.

How is a flying island created? Select the context with the mouse. Highlighting creates the basis of the surface - a quote.A button appears under it, barely noticeable, translucent, which we are used to seeing in Word, starting with "2007". It may soon disappear, and rightly so if text selection was created for other purposes. But if you move the mouse, it creates the support of our future quote book, floating in the clouds.

Why do you need a quote book? It turns out that there can be many goals. Quotations are needed if we want to answer the statement in the article. If you want to remember the quote. If you want to report an error in the text or discuss a quote in a letter. Even commenting on an article is often more convenient to write next to the context, like everything else. And so the flying castle is born - light and compact, instantly moved and reappearing with the same movement of the mouse. If it was drawn in a movie, then why not draw it in HTML?

The list of citations and corrections created in the article is displayed as a list of links above the quotation block. The letter of the link displays the type of quote (quote, logical error, grammar, punctuation, typo, or stylistic). They correspond to the characteristic colors for each type of correction. The corrector (the person creating the quotes) needs colors to quickly navigate the set of quotes:

C - Quote - prevails in discussions;
w - error logical / actual. They are rare;
G - Grammatical - the most common;
P - Punctuation - second in frequency;
About - Typo - 2-3rd in frequency;
C - Stylistic - rarely seen.

For frequently encountered grammatical and punctuation errors, the most contrasting, distinguishable colors are selected, which have associations by marks in Word. The places of errors of logic and stylistics in quotes are distinguished longer, therefore, for them - the colors are calmer.

The method of entering errors, their places and replacement texts is made as lazy as possible, using a minimum of operational elements. Special error input fields are not created. The user is not forced to rewrite or copy the text, or even read 2 copies - incorrect and correct. Instead, they simply click on the error type button (or the quote button) first. There are six such buttons. A new quote icon is created above the quote and placed in a series of previously created characters in the order in the text.

There may be one or more errors in the quote. Therefore, the letters of the types of errors are combined together and look like a syllable or word: how many letters, so many errors are noted in one quote. And if the quote has errors, then the letter "C" is not required for it.

What does the citation process look like

1) Allocate a quote for commenting or with one or more errors. The algorithm itself will capture partially captured words into the quote and add a line before and after if the quote is short (less than 1 line);

2) Click the context button - type of error (1 out of 5) or “comment” ("<_>"). The selected text will immediately be made into a quote - text without formatting in a block of approximately square outlines. Above the quote appears a list of previously created quotes for this article. The symbol for the new quote takes place among others in the order of the quote in the article. In the same list - “View citations to other articles”, if any are in the repository.

3) Under the quote, an empty input field appears for corrections or comments. For a comment, just enter your text (the input field will grow). For correction - erroneous characters are highlighted in the quote. It is permissible to capture neighboring ones so that the highlight in the letter is noticeable.

4) After the selection, a copy of the selection appears in the input field. These are the characters that are then replaced with the correct option. If I must say that these characters are superfluous, they are deleted. If you need to fix or supplement - insert your characters. You can repeat steps 2-3-4 again to describe another mistake or comment.

5) All characters in the input field are immediately remembered as edits. No need to press buttons, enter Enter or Ctrl-Entrer. To complete the editing operation, it is enough to exit the contextual input of the comment by clicking, including randomly, at another place in the window. It easily continues by selecting the edit from the list above the quote. The current quote is remembered, return to it is carried out by the return button: "<_".

6) When you return to the revision or when you select the previous revision, the entire context of the quote is restored: the quote, comment, and all errors (replacements) noted in the quote.

7) To correct a comment on a quote, just select the quote again and rewrite the comment. To correct the content of the error, you need to click on the error area and correct the replacement text. To remove a quote or a mark of an error in it, use the gesture - throwing the quote from the list or the error area from the quote. Neither the borders of the quote, nor the boundaries of errors can be fixed; you can only delete them and recreate them.

So, by noticing errors at ease, the corrector does not think about sending a letter until his intuition tells you that it’s time. No problem. Quotes are stored in the repository, so they are accessible from the browser on the computer constantly, from any window, with possible shutdowns of the browser and computer. They are constantly visible in the editing context window. When switching to other articles, there is a button to display the entire list of saved quotes.

Mark citations in the article

If necessary, citations look like sections of text highlighted in the (uncorrected) text of the article. All of them have at least 1 character, so a link is placed on the site, clicking which returns to the error correction. For the convenience of clicking and future reading, 2-3 characters around the error are automatically highlighted if the selection takes 1-3 characters. Visually, the selection looks like underlining and paler highlighting of a section of text with a background color corresponding to the type of error.

To transfer quotes to another browser or computer, click the “Export / Import” button. Therefore, if the dialogue does not require immediate start and quick sending, it is possible to send written from another computer.

If the author of the article accepted the corrections and corrected exactly, the citations cease to be searched in the previous form, but are searched for in the new one - they are marked as accepted and deleted from the article. If they ceased to be searched at all, they are marked as “lost”, and the place of their marking is marked by highlighting the background before consideration.

For statistics and observation, the task of the script is to calculate the number of types of errors and report these statistics briefly at the beginning of the letter.

Quote Transfer Method

Old fashioned way. The encoding will not be visible to the addressee. He will receive a letter in polite form representing the places of errors and possible corrections. In the final letter, the colors of the errors will only illustrate their places in the quotes and help to visually search.

Modern. The author receives a list of edits in JSON that appear in his article as well as text highlighting. In the contextual quote, a list appears not only of your own quotes (if any), but also of those who have arrived. To accept them, the “accept” button is clicked (the entire quote or individual errors). A floating frame opens with an article editing form, and the specified quote or error is searched for in the text, and is copied to replacement texts.

If the author partially agrees with the replacement, he changes the text of the correction. The commentator is answered with a change. If he does not agree with the replacement, throws it out with a mouse gesture from the quote. In any case, the commentator receives an answer.

Comments on the quote (including those with errors) come in the form of texts after the quote. The author has the opportunity to edit not only the citation of his text, but also edit the comment that came, including an indication of errors. To write your comment means to continue the discussion. In fact, a comment thread is created on the quote. Comments of quotes are “accepted” by the same button, which in this case means “read”. There is no action on the text, only a message is sent to the commentator. If you provide for several “emotional” buttons, a mechanism is created for evaluating a quote or commentary on it.

(Someone wrote about this method of commenting for a long time and even made an implementation, offering to highlight the places of comments in yellow. They joked in the answers that over time the whole article will turn yellow.)

Discussion Repositories

To the futuristic interface of discussions we finish offtopic: infrastructure. A commenting mechanism is created that is tied to citations, a mechanism for correcting and discussing errors and quotes, and it is not necessarily tied to the author of the article or a specific site. The commentator’s address does not necessarily indicate the author, but, for example, a circle of acquaintances or colleagues with whom an arbitrary page is being discussed. All text of interest and the discussion is stored in the memory of the computers of interested parties. The response button for the initial submission of the article is an assessment that speaks publicly whether the recipient will remember this page and participate in the discussion on it.

As a result, we get a system from a mixture of Digg, Reddit, Disqus and ordinary forums and social networks. Yes, even with an admixture of P2P, which is significant. On the side of the discussion, information sources are, in principle, not involved. They are required to supply a source once. Whereas in server-centered media, users depend on source policies, here they manage the sources themselves. Sites are trying to highlight the right audience, to disperse the wrong. Here this task rests with the groups themselves. Each person is valuable in their own knowledge and ability to process strangers.

On the side of the source of the articles, there remains a passive reception and registration of discussions, if the source is interested. If discussions are not recorded, all their preservation rests with interested participants. Participants gain control over what they read and their messages. If the reader is interested, he remembers the article in a personal archive. Personal archives work offline; when a head source is lost, they are distributed via p2p.