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This manual makes use of some common terms regarding stand-off markup.
That’s the document, the external annotations refer to. It may be a plain text file, but may also contain markup, e.g. XML-Tags.
That’s the markup, which is already contained in the source document, e.g. the XML-Tags contained there.
That’s the markup, which exits beside the source document. Stand-Off mode produces this kind of markup.
That’s a document, that contains stand-off annotations, which refer an other document.
That’s a procedure, which adds external annotations into a source document, e.g. by producing a (new) XML document. This is not done by standoff-mode, but by an other tool. See http://github.com/lueck/standoff-tools.
That’s a procedure, which extracts annotations from a document and generates external markup from them.
See also http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/de/html/SA.html#SASO and http://www.openannotation.org/spec/core/.
Please skip this, if you’re familiar with Emacs.
Do something but simply inserting characters into a file. A command is called by typing a key sequence, by calling by it’s name or by selecting it from the menu.
Messages, e.g. generated by commands, are displayed in the echo area at the bottom of an Emacs windows.
Hold down Control and press g to quit a partially executed command. The message “Quit” will show up in the echo area. This is the most imported key binding in Emacs.
When the minibuffer is in use, it appears in the echo area, with a cursor. The minibuffer starts with a prompt, usually ending with a colon. The prompt states what kind of input is expected, and how it will be used.
The buffer is the basic editing unit. One buffer corresponds to one piece of text being edited. You can have several buffers open at once, but can edit only one at a time. Exercise: Find out how to change buffers.
standoff mode make the buffer of the source document read only. Other special buffers, e.g. for displaying relations, are read only, too.
Several buffers can be visible at the same time when you’re splitting your window. Exercise: Find out how to split and unsplit a window.
In Emacs, frames are what window managers call windows. Exercise: Find out how to display a new frame.
Point is the position of the curser.
In a buffer, you can set marks, which you can return to by simple key combinations.
In Emacs, region is the name of the selection area of a buffer. It is the text spanning between the last set mark and the point. It can be selected with the keyboard and with the mouse.
Each Emacs window (aside from minibuffer windows) typically has a mode line at the bottom, which displays status information about the buffer displayed in the window. The mode line contains information about the buffer, such as its name, associated file and major and minor modes. Some programs call this the status bar.
Emacs contains many editing modes that alter its basic behavior in useful ways by provinding commands. standoff mode is a mode and the behaviour it defines is described in this manual.
Each frame has a menu bar. You can select many, but not all commands from it. Standoff mode adds the Stand-Off menu. It is gone, if the minibuffer is active.
Some Emacs commands are invoked by just one input event; for example, C-f moves forward one character in the buffer. Other commands take two or more input events to invoke, such as C-x C-f and C-x 4 C-f. A key sequence, or key for short, is a sequence of one or more input events that is meaningful as a unit.
To input the key sequence C-f, hold down Control and then press f. Control is the first modifier key in Emacs. The second modifier key is M-, which stands for Meta. To input M-x, either hold down Alt or–if you’re on a keyboard without Alt–press ESC, then press x.
You can call a command by it’s name instead of typing a key sequence or selecting it from the menu. Type in the M-x key sequence first, then call the command name and then press Return. In short: M-x command-name RET.
In standoff-mode, there are only a few commands, that have to be called by name. These are commands that could mess up your annotation data, so you better know what you are doing. Most other commands can either be called by key combinations or from the menus.
For more information, see the Emacs manual.
Next: Character offsets, Previous: Installation, Up: Introduction [Contents]