Link from AnnotationCollection to target(s) of included Annotations?

[azaroth42]

This came up in the IIIF use of collections (lists) of Annotations [1], so I'll raise it here too for consideration.

If you have a set of AnnotationCollections, each with some reasonably large number of Annotations in them, it would be a practical improvement to not require the client download all of the lists just to determine which of them contain annotations that target the resource(s) of interest. Instead the annotation collection could optionally link through to the target of the annotations.

Essentially this is the propertyChain of from AnnotationCollection through AnnotationCollectionPage to the individual Annotations in items, to each hasTarget, and then potentially also down to hasSource if the target is a specific resource.

I understand the value of this in terms of the interaction patterns and optimization, but equally could be premature optimization. Any thoughts as to the value would be appreciated :)

[1] AnnotationList and forCanvas: IIIF/api#754

[iherman]

On 10 Mar 2016, at 00:40, Rob Sanderson notifications@github.com wrote:

This came up in the IIIF use of collections (lists) of Annotations [1], so I'll raise it here too for consideration.

If you have a set of AnnotationCollections, each with some reasonably large number of Annotations in them, it would be a practical improvement to not require the client download all of the lists just to determine which of them contain annotations that target the resource(s) of interest. Instead the annotation collection could optionally link through to the target of the annotations.

Essentially this is the propertyChain of from AnnotationCollection through AnnotationCollectionPage to the individual Annotations in items, to each hasTarget, and then potentially also down to hasSource if the target is a specific resource.

I understand the value of this in terms of the interaction patterns and optimization, but equally could be premature optimization. Any thoughts as to the value would be appreciated :)

My gut feeling is that this is indeed some sort of a premature optimization. Do we have implementation experience for something like that? I think we may want to decide to postpone this for a possible 2nd version.

[1] AnnotationList and forCanvas: IIIF/api#754 IIIF/api#754

[azaroth42]

I'm fine with postponing, just wanted to raise it and see what people thought. It's also something that could easily be added as an extension for experimentation.

[BigBlueHat]

👍 to keeping it in the extension space. The narrower our focus right now, the better.

[iherman]

Discussed on 2016-03-11: Add an informative note in extension section calling this use case as an example, if need be later would be revisited.

See: http://www.w3.org/2016/03/11-annotation-irc#T16-20-58

[azaroth42]

Decision to change the example, so closing this issue.