Goals of the Project
Many tools exist for marking up text in XML. However, for a number of our projects, we need to be able to mark up images -- by which I mean that we need to be able to describe and annotate images, and store the resulting data in TEI XML files. For this, relatively few tools exist, and those that do are either rather too complicated for novices not expert at markup (for example the Edition Production Technology) or use a proprietary file format (such as INote). Our aim is to produce a tool which creates conformant TEI P5 XML files, but which has a simple enough interface that it can be used by people with little or no experience in editing XML code.
The Image Markup Tool should:
- be simple for novices to use
- load and display a wide variety of different image formats
- allow the user to specify arbitrary rectangles on the image, and associate them with annotations
- allow such rectangles to overlap if the user wishes
- provide mechanisms for bringing overlapped rectangles to the front easily
- allow annotations to be grouped into categories, distinguished by name and appearance, to allow different classes of annotation
- require no significant knowledge of XML or TEI
- allow the use of complex XML code if the user wishes
- save data in an XML file which conforms to a TEI P5-based schema
- reload data from its own files
- generate a simple "Web view" of the data for display in a browser
- come packaged with an installer, Help file, and basic tutorial
- be simple for novices to use!
The Image Markup Tool will not:
- perform validation against a schema
- guarantee to preserve XML code which is added to one of its files in an external editor (although it will try)