Project terminology
From Open Bookmarks
When embarking on a project like this, it's important to nail down some terminology so we all know what we're talking about.
"Bookmarks" in particular is quite nebulous. For the purpose of this project we define three specific types of bookmark, (which can be considered as extensions of each other).
- Pointer: a simple position marker, like a dog-ear.
- Highlight: a position plus a snippet of the text bookmarked.
- Note: a position plus an additional piece of text added by the reader.
(It's worth noting that current electronic bookmarking systems may or may not include a highlight with a note. This should be discussed.)
Position: throughout, we will refer to "positions" within a text. The method of determining this position (as a page number, a percentage of the text, and so on) will be discussed elsewhere.
Scrobbling: There's a further operation required, that of sharing general attention data, or scrobbling. Scrobbling is a term taken from music attention data service Last.fm and is used in place of any widely accepted alternative.
Attention data is a digital record that describes the time spent interacting with someone or something: in this case, reading books.
(It is possible this term might be confusing, as it usually refers only to music data, and that in conjunction with Last.fm's services; it is also possible Last.fm might object to its use, as they have trademarked the terms 'Audioscrobbler' and 'scrobbler'. As a result, suggested alternatives are welcome.)
Ereader / eReader may be used at times to denote any ereading platform, whether a standalone device (e.g. Kindle device, Sony Reader, Nook etc.), or a mobile, desktop, web or other application.
OCR is a common abbreviation for Optical Character Recognition, the automatic process by which many ebooks are created from scanned page images.
