A better permalink? Or is that “purplelink?”

Augmented Reality 1 Minute

Doug Engelbart mentioned purple numbers last week during dinner and I was just reminded about that again so I went and did some research on what they are. I guess I missed that whole meme, which demonstrates yet again just how hard it is to get the world to change. We’re being thrown so much information it’s hard to hear every idea. Anyway, Eugene Kim’s blog has the details and his site has more. You can see Doug’s Website with purple numbers here.

I think they’d drive me nuts because I often add a paragraph after publishing, or edit things, but, realistically, that’s just a tool problem. Keeping these from breaking would be difficult. What do you think?

Published by Robert Scoble

I help entrepreneurs build their technology business' story, help with getting ready for investors, with other launch plans, and many other strategic things that can help your new startup. Call to talk: +1-425-205-1921 (text first).

Published

75 thoughts on “A better permalink? Or is that “purplelink?””

  1. It has been a long time ago since I last heard about “Purple numbers”. The idea is very good, but as you say, nobody is going to do this manually, and in all those months (years?) since the original idea, nobody implemented it in any CMS.

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  2. It has been a long time ago since I last heard about “Purple numbers”. The idea is very good, but as you say, nobody is going to do this manually, and in all those months (years?) since the original idea, nobody implemented it in any CMS.

    Like

  3. It has been a long time ago since I last heard about “Purple numbers”. The idea is very good, but as you say, nobody is going to do this manually, and in all those months (years?) since the original idea, nobody implemented it in any CMS.

    Like

  4. That is truly ghastly! I’m sure there is a place for it in long documents about specific subjects – but the usage in these examples alone is just plain daft. I would stop reading blogs written like that, just the same way I would stop reading any other badly formatted or presented blog.

    Like

  5. That is truly ghastly! I’m sure there is a place for it in long documents about specific subjects – but the usage in these examples alone is just plain daft. I would stop reading blogs written like that, just the same way I would stop reading any other badly formatted or presented blog.

    Like

  6. That is truly ghastly! I’m sure there is a place for it in long documents about specific subjects – but the usage in these examples alone is just plain daft. I would stop reading blogs written like that, just the same way I would stop reading any other badly formatted or presented blog.

    Like

  10. There are ways to do it that don’t break, I do it on Scripting News.

    But instead of using a sequence number, which breaks (as Scoble notes), I use the time the paragraph was created (which breaks if you create two paragraphs in the same second, hard to do). That way you can add a paragraph in the middle, or even move them around, and the permalinks don’t break (I don’t bother displaying a number, people don’t need that, the machines do, so the number is encoded in the url as a time).

    Now that said, I don’t bother generating them for sub-paragraphs. I could, but I think that’s a bit anal.

    Like

  11. There are ways to do it that don’t break, I do it on Scripting News.

    But instead of using a sequence number, which breaks (as Scoble notes), I use the time the paragraph was created (which breaks if you create two paragraphs in the same second, hard to do). That way you can add a paragraph in the middle, or even move them around, and the permalinks don’t break (I don’t bother displaying a number, people don’t need that, the machines do, so the number is encoded in the url as a time).

    Now that said, I don’t bother generating them for sub-paragraphs. I could, but I think that’s a bit anal.

    Like

  12. There are ways to do it that don’t break, I do it on Scripting News.

    But instead of using a sequence number, which breaks (as Scoble notes), I use the time the paragraph was created (which breaks if you create two paragraphs in the same second, hard to do). That way you can add a paragraph in the middle, or even move them around, and the permalinks don’t break (I don’t bother displaying a number, people don’t need that, the machines do, so the number is encoded in the url as a time).

    Now that said, I don’t bother generating them for sub-paragraphs. I could, but I think that’s a bit anal.

    Like

  13. I think they’re excellent. The problem may be in how they are displayed. But the ability to reference specific concepts, areas of thought and such in text can be very useful for search and aggregation of idea areas. This is in the realm of tagging and should be encouraged and supported.

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  14. I think they’re excellent. The problem may be in how they are displayed. But the ability to reference specific concepts, areas of thought and such in text can be very useful for search and aggregation of idea areas. This is in the realm of tagging and should be encouraged and supported.

    Like

  15. I think they’re excellent. The problem may be in how they are displayed. But the ability to reference specific concepts, areas of thought and such in text can be very useful for search and aggregation of idea areas. This is in the realm of tagging and should be encouraged and supported.

    Like

  16. I read “An Introduction to Purple” and find the numbers distracting.

    I dont’t think, a single paragraph is this important. I’ve never felt the urge to link to a single paragraph.

    I mean, every composition by Mozart is referenced by it’s Köchel catalogue number. If a simple number per piece is enough for Mozart’s art, it sure is sufficient for my lame attempts at writing.

    Janek.

    Like

  17. I read “An Introduction to Purple” and find the numbers distracting.

    I dont’t think, a single paragraph is this important. I’ve never felt the urge to link to a single paragraph.

    I mean, every composition by Mozart is referenced by it’s Köchel catalogue number. If a simple number per piece is enough for Mozart’s art, it sure is sufficient for my lame attempts at writing.

    Janek.

    Like

  18. I read “An Introduction to Purple” and find the numbers distracting.

    I dont’t think, a single paragraph is this important. I’ve never felt the urge to link to a single paragraph.

    I mean, every composition by Mozart is referenced by it’s Köchel catalogue number. If a simple number per piece is enough for Mozart’s art, it sure is sufficient for my lame attempts at writing.

    Janek.

    Like

  22. Purple Numbers are a great idea, though some folks, like Tim Bray, prefer Purple Pilcrows:

    http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/29/PurpleNumbers

    Though they boil down to the same idea, I think the granularity of purple is slightly different than Dave’s permalinks. Purple numbers appear within (the equivalent of) a single blog/RSS item, whereas the permalinks are per-item. It looks the same in Dave’s case because he only has one paragraph per item.

    You might also want to check out Annotea, which allows you to mark pieces of a doc with per-character precision (using XPointer).

    Like

  23. Purple Numbers are a great idea, though some folks, like Tim Bray, prefer Purple Pilcrows:

    http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/29/PurpleNumbers

    Though they boil down to the same idea, I think the granularity of purple is slightly different than Dave’s permalinks. Purple numbers appear within (the equivalent of) a single blog/RSS item, whereas the permalinks are per-item. It looks the same in Dave’s case because he only has one paragraph per item.

    You might also want to check out Annotea, which allows you to mark pieces of a doc with per-character precision (using XPointer).

    Like

  24. Purple Numbers are a great idea, though some folks, like Tim Bray, prefer Purple Pilcrows:

    http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/05/29/PurpleNumbers

    Though they boil down to the same idea, I think the granularity of purple is slightly different than Dave’s permalinks. Purple numbers appear within (the equivalent of) a single blog/RSS item, whereas the permalinks are per-item. It looks the same in Dave’s case because he only has one paragraph per item.

    You might also want to check out Annotea, which allows you to mark pieces of a doc with per-character precision (using XPointer).

    Like

  31. Rather than posting purple numbers why dont you incorporate the links into the contents of the post. Information Mapping pushes chunking all info to make it easier to scan while labeling each chunk of information with a title. Make the title the permalink rather than 3C. The purple numbers are noise to a casual reader, by incorporating the idea into the actual content you add value to those who want the links while not disrupting the flow of the information.

    Plus a title link is more relevant to the actual content of what you are linking to.

    Like

  32. Rather than posting purple numbers why dont you incorporate the links into the contents of the post. Information Mapping pushes chunking all info to make it easier to scan while labeling each chunk of information with a title. Make the title the permalink rather than 3C. The purple numbers are noise to a casual reader, by incorporating the idea into the actual content you add value to those who want the links while not disrupting the flow of the information.

    Plus a title link is more relevant to the actual content of what you are linking to.

    Like

  33. Rather than posting purple numbers why dont you incorporate the links into the contents of the post. Information Mapping pushes chunking all info to make it easier to scan while labeling each chunk of information with a title. Make the title the permalink rather than 3C. The purple numbers are noise to a casual reader, by incorporating the idea into the actual content you add value to those who want the links while not disrupting the flow of the information.

    Plus a title link is more relevant to the actual content of what you are linking to.

    Like

  40. Purple numbers are valuable and pragmatic. On the other hand they do clutter the visual field. Also they fail to provide the specificity/generality often desired for cross referencing. A similar complaint can be directed against HTML named anchor tags (…) The page has too few (for the referrer), or too many (for the reader), or a referrer needs an anchor that refers to a span.

    XPointer lets us refer to parts of a resource (page) explicitly — without relying on the page author to have foreseen every permutation of subselection we might want to reference. But XPointer was initially crippled by lack of a practical, implementable (implemented) query language or “scheme”.

    This situation may be changing quickly since the folks over at the Text Encoding Initiative have defined (and co-opted) a nice simple little composable family of XPointer “schemes” based on simple, off the shelf stuff like XPath and friends: http://tinyurl.com/9lkat With this in place, the referring application reads the target page and applies the query part of the URL through the scheme(s) to arrive at the content.

    Like

  41. Purple numbers are valuable and pragmatic. On the other hand they do clutter the visual field. Also they fail to provide the specificity/generality often desired for cross referencing. A similar complaint can be directed against HTML named anchor tags (…) The page has too few (for the referrer), or too many (for the reader), or a referrer needs an anchor that refers to a span.

    XPointer lets us refer to parts of a resource (page) explicitly — without relying on the page author to have foreseen every permutation of subselection we might want to reference. But XPointer was initially crippled by lack of a practical, implementable (implemented) query language or “scheme”.

    This situation may be changing quickly since the folks over at the Text Encoding Initiative have defined (and co-opted) a nice simple little composable family of XPointer “schemes” based on simple, off the shelf stuff like XPath and friends: http://tinyurl.com/9lkat With this in place, the referring application reads the target page and applies the query part of the URL through the scheme(s) to arrive at the content.

    Like

  42. Purple numbers are valuable and pragmatic. On the other hand they do clutter the visual field. Also they fail to provide the specificity/generality often desired for cross referencing. A similar complaint can be directed against HTML named anchor tags (…) The page has too few (for the referrer), or too many (for the reader), or a referrer needs an anchor that refers to a span.

    XPointer lets us refer to parts of a resource (page) explicitly — without relying on the page author to have foreseen every permutation of subselection we might want to reference. But XPointer was initially crippled by lack of a practical, implementable (implemented) query language or “scheme”.

    This situation may be changing quickly since the folks over at the Text Encoding Initiative have defined (and co-opted) a nice simple little composable family of XPointer “schemes” based on simple, off the shelf stuff like XPath and friends: http://tinyurl.com/9lkat With this in place, the referring application reads the target page and applies the query part of the URL through the scheme(s) to arrive at the content.

    Like

  43. The fun with identifiers like PurpleNumbers grows exponentially when you start using it to allow TransClusion.

    Everybody always hits on the issue of purple number ugliness. In the earlier implementations that I’ve been involved with, making the numbers very apparent was important so that people knew they were there and had that moment of discovery. CSS and other tools can help constrain the presentation of the numbers.

    In the end the implementation of granular addressability and transclusion isn’t really that important: it’s getting the concepts into brains so it can be improved and evolve. Small, simple, reusable chunks help build a complex and interesting world.

    Like

  44. The fun with identifiers like PurpleNumbers grows exponentially when you start using it to allow TransClusion.

    Everybody always hits on the issue of purple number ugliness. In the earlier implementations that I’ve been involved with, making the numbers very apparent was important so that people knew they were there and had that moment of discovery. CSS and other tools can help constrain the presentation of the numbers.

    In the end the implementation of granular addressability and transclusion isn’t really that important: it’s getting the concepts into brains so it can be improved and evolve. Small, simple, reusable chunks help build a complex and interesting world.

    Like

  45. The fun with identifiers like PurpleNumbers grows exponentially when you start using it to allow TransClusion.

    Everybody always hits on the issue of purple number ugliness. In the earlier implementations that I’ve been involved with, making the numbers very apparent was important so that people knew they were there and had that moment of discovery. CSS and other tools can help constrain the presentation of the numbers.

    In the end the implementation of granular addressability and transclusion isn’t really that important: it’s getting the concepts into brains so it can be improved and evolve. Small, simple, reusable chunks help build a complex and interesting world.

    Like

  46. Janek wrote: ” If a simple number per piece is enough for Mozart’s art, it sure is sufficient for my lame attempts at writing.”

    Actually, it isn’t. The “K number” gets you to the desired composition (though there can be multiple versions) but then you may also specify the movement within the piece and even the section of a movement. (For example, 1st theme of in the exposition section of the first movement of symphony #40.)

    Fun stuff…

    Dan

    Like

  47. Janek wrote: ” If a simple number per piece is enough for Mozart’s art, it sure is sufficient for my lame attempts at writing.”

    Actually, it isn’t. The “K number” gets you to the desired composition (though there can be multiple versions) but then you may also specify the movement within the piece and even the section of a movement. (For example, 1st theme of in the exposition section of the first movement of symphony #40.)

    Fun stuff…

    Dan

    Like

  48. Janek wrote: ” If a simple number per piece is enough for Mozart’s art, it sure is sufficient for my lame attempts at writing.”

    Actually, it isn’t. The “K number” gets you to the desired composition (though there can be multiple versions) but then you may also specify the movement within the piece and even the section of a movement. (For example, 1st theme of in the exposition section of the first movement of symphony #40.)

    Fun stuff…

    Dan

    Like

  49. There has to be a better way than this. I can see why they are useful, and I think it would be really nice to have some implementation of this concept, and I like the Bible example I just read, but visually it looks bad. And (as has been said before) implementation would be a bit of a nightmare.

    There are bound to be places were you would want to only reference a single *sentance*, for instance – it would be really amazingly cool if my browser let me highlight part of a text and create a permalink out of it, which if you referenced it, would go to the page, scroll to the right bit of it and highlight the section. It’s overheating my brain a little trying to think through the implementation of that(!) – but I don’t think these purple numbers are it. It’s got me thinking though… 🙂

    Like

  50. There has to be a better way than this. I can see why they are useful, and I think it would be really nice to have some implementation of this concept, and I like the Bible example I just read, but visually it looks bad. And (as has been said before) implementation would be a bit of a nightmare.

    There are bound to be places were you would want to only reference a single *sentance*, for instance – it would be really amazingly cool if my browser let me highlight part of a text and create a permalink out of it, which if you referenced it, would go to the page, scroll to the right bit of it and highlight the section. It’s overheating my brain a little trying to think through the implementation of that(!) – but I don’t think these purple numbers are it. It’s got me thinking though… 🙂

    Like

  51. There has to be a better way than this. I can see why they are useful, and I think it would be really nice to have some implementation of this concept, and I like the Bible example I just read, but visually it looks bad. And (as has been said before) implementation would be a bit of a nightmare.

    There are bound to be places were you would want to only reference a single *sentance*, for instance – it would be really amazingly cool if my browser let me highlight part of a text and create a permalink out of it, which if you referenced it, would go to the page, scroll to the right bit of it and highlight the section. It’s overheating my brain a little trying to think through the implementation of that(!) – but I don’t think these purple numbers are it. It’s got me thinking though… 🙂

    Like

  52. @Tom
    I like your idea for a browser imlpementation, as it does remove the ghastly links. But also, more importantly, it removes the writer from the misguided belief that every paragraph they write is worth bookmarking.

    @Will
    Using a title also makes sense – if you believe the paragraph is worth linking to direct, then it’s probably worth having its own heading.

    Like

  53. @Tom
    I like your idea for a browser imlpementation, as it does remove the ghastly links. But also, more importantly, it removes the writer from the misguided belief that every paragraph they write is worth bookmarking.

    @Will
    Using a title also makes sense – if you believe the paragraph is worth linking to direct, then it’s probably worth having its own heading.

    Like

  54. @Tom
    I like your idea for a browser imlpementation, as it does remove the ghastly links. But also, more importantly, it removes the writer from the misguided belief that every paragraph they write is worth bookmarking.

    @Will
    Using a title also makes sense – if you believe the paragraph is worth linking to direct, then it’s probably worth having its own heading.

    Like

  55. I hate the visual “noise.” 99.9% of a blog’s readers could care less about “granularity,” so to them, the noise can be at best neutral, and at worst a nose-wrinkling irritation.

    Here’s a friendlier implementation: The publishing software can automatically create permalinks for each paragraph, but doesn’t display them until you click on a link at the end of the post.

    Like

  56. I hate the visual “noise.” 99.9% of a blog’s readers could care less about “granularity,” so to them, the noise can be at best neutral, and at worst a nose-wrinkling irritation.

    Here’s a friendlier implementation: The publishing software can automatically create permalinks for each paragraph, but doesn’t display them until you click on a link at the end of the post.

    Like

  57. I hate the visual “noise.” 99.9% of a blog’s readers could care less about “granularity,” so to them, the noise can be at best neutral, and at worst a nose-wrinkling irritation.

    Here’s a friendlier implementation: The publishing software can automatically create permalinks for each paragraph, but doesn’t display them until you click on a link at the end of the post.

    Like

  58. tom:for instance – it would be really amazingly cool if my browser let me highlight part of a text and create a permalink out of it, which if you referenced it, would go to the page, scroll to the right bit of it and highlight the section.

    Such a tool exists (JavaScript+DOM-based). It’s called Ahoy and works in every Mozilla-based browser, including Firefox, but requires the site/page owner to link the ahoy.js file into the page via a SCRIPT element. Just click and select some text with your Alt key pressed.

    For example, a direct link to “creating your first Ahoy anchor from a text selection” (there’s no ‘preview’ option for comments here, so hopefully WordPress won’t mangle the url):

    http://dev.lophty.com/ahoy/article.htm?ahyAnchor=1.1&ahyParentNodeTagName=P&ahyParentNodeIndex=28&ahyChildIndex=0&ahySelectionStart=23&ahySelectionLength=53#ahoyanchor

    Here’s the plain vanilla link to the article: http://dev.lophty.com/ahoy/article.htm

    Ahoy is GPL’d. You can download it and use it on your own sites.

    Like

  59. tom:for instance – it would be really amazingly cool if my browser let me highlight part of a text and create a permalink out of it, which if you referenced it, would go to the page, scroll to the right bit of it and highlight the section.

    Such a tool exists (JavaScript+DOM-based). It’s called Ahoy and works in every Mozilla-based browser, including Firefox, but requires the site/page owner to link the ahoy.js file into the page via a SCRIPT element. Just click and select some text with your Alt key pressed.

    For example, a direct link to “creating your first Ahoy anchor from a text selection” (there’s no ‘preview’ option for comments here, so hopefully WordPress won’t mangle the url):

    http://dev.lophty.com/ahoy/article.htm?ahyAnchor=1.1&ahyParentNodeTagName=P&ahyParentNodeIndex=28&ahyChildIndex=0&ahySelectionStart=23&ahySelectionLength=53#ahoyanchor

    Here’s the plain vanilla link to the article: http://dev.lophty.com/ahoy/article.htm

    Ahoy is GPL’d. You can download it and use it on your own sites.

    Like

  60. tom:for instance – it would be really amazingly cool if my browser let me highlight part of a text and create a permalink out of it, which if you referenced it, would go to the page, scroll to the right bit of it and highlight the section.

    Such a tool exists (JavaScript+DOM-based). It’s called Ahoy and works in every Mozilla-based browser, including Firefox, but requires the site/page owner to link the ahoy.js file into the page via a SCRIPT element. Just click and select some text with your Alt key pressed.

    For example, a direct link to “creating your first Ahoy anchor from a text selection” (there’s no ‘preview’ option for comments here, so hopefully WordPress won’t mangle the url):

    http://dev.lophty.com/ahoy/article.htm?ahyAnchor=1.1&ahyParentNodeTagName=P&ahyParentNodeIndex=28&ahyChildIndex=0&ahySelectionStart=23&ahySelectionLength=53#ahoyanchor

    Here’s the plain vanilla link to the article: http://dev.lophty.com/ahoy/article.htm

    Ahoy is GPL’d. You can download it and use it on your own sites.

    Like

  61. There have been PurpleNumber plugins for Movable Type for years now, but most people don’t understand what they do or what the value is, so it’s unlikely to become part of the core of any CMS. For most readers, it’s just more screen cruft/clutter.

    Like

  62. There have been PurpleNumber plugins for Movable Type for years now, but most people don’t understand what they do or what the value is, so it’s unlikely to become part of the core of any CMS. For most readers, it’s just more screen cruft/clutter.

    Like

  63. There have been PurpleNumber plugins for Movable Type for years now, but most people don’t understand what they do or what the value is, so it’s unlikely to become part of the core of any CMS. For most readers, it’s just more screen cruft/clutter.

    Like

  73. I think it is important to note that the purple number solutions mentioned here are for publishers and authors of content – not for consumers. In other words the publisher must implement the solution or no purple numbers are available for the consumer. Relative to the Web at larger, not many Web sites implement purple numbers.

    Ahoy is cool in that it enables a _consumer_ of the Web page to link to a particular passage of their choosing, umm, provided the publisher has implemented Ahoy on their web site. I think this would also be the case for the Text Encoding Initiative.

    Two years ago I got around this short coming of Ahoy by transcoding the Ahoy script into the target web page on the fly via a web proxy.[1][2]

    A year or so prior to that I had written PurpleSlurple[3] to transcode purple numbers into web pages on the fly.

    Last year I released QuiP. QuiP reverses the process of creating the granular link, vs PSAhoy, to a more logical sequence, to my mind: Select text to link to, click bookmarklet, optionally add note (something Ahoy doesn’t do)[3].

    Parlor tricks perhaps, but effective enough for my uses, and _importantly_ tools for the consumer.

    [1]PSAhoy post: http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-11/msg00069.html
    [2]PSAhoy sample: http://sasites.com/suse/apache/files/psAhoy.php?collapse=yes&theurl=http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/22/a-better-permalink-or-is-that-purplelink/&ahyAnchor=1.1&ahyParentNodeTagName=P&ahyParentNodeIndex=54&ahyChildIndex=1&ahySelectionStart=104&ahySelectionLength=220#ahoyanchor
    [3]PurpleSlurple: http://purpleslurple.net/
    [4]QuiP sample: http://sasites.com/quip04.php?url=http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/22/a-better-permalink-or-is-that-purplelink/&text=it%20would%20be%20really%20amazingly%20cool%20if%20my%20browser%20let%20me%20highlight%20part%20of%20a%20text%20and%20create%20a%20permalink%20out%20of%20it&title=I%20suppose%20you%20mean%20something%20like%20this.%20–%20MAS#quip

    Like

  74. I think it is important to note that the purple number solutions mentioned here are for publishers and authors of content – not for consumers. In other words the publisher must implement the solution or no purple numbers are available for the consumer. Relative to the Web at larger, not many Web sites implement purple numbers.

    Ahoy is cool in that it enables a _consumer_ of the Web page to link to a particular passage of their choosing, umm, provided the publisher has implemented Ahoy on their web site. I think this would also be the case for the Text Encoding Initiative.

    Two years ago I got around this short coming of Ahoy by transcoding the Ahoy script into the target web page on the fly via a web proxy.[1][2]

    A year or so prior to that I had written PurpleSlurple[3] to transcode purple numbers into web pages on the fly.

    Last year I released QuiP. QuiP reverses the process of creating the granular link, vs PSAhoy, to a more logical sequence, to my mind: Select text to link to, click bookmarklet, optionally add note (something Ahoy doesn’t do)[3].

    Parlor tricks perhaps, but effective enough for my uses, and _importantly_ tools for the consumer.

    [1]PSAhoy post: http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-11/msg00069.html
    [2]PSAhoy sample: http://sasites.com/suse/apache/files/psAhoy.php?collapse=yes&theurl=http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/22/a-better-permalink-or-is-that-purplelink/&ahyAnchor=1.1&ahyParentNodeTagName=P&ahyParentNodeIndex=54&ahyChildIndex=1&ahySelectionStart=104&ahySelectionLength=220#ahoyanchor
    [3]PurpleSlurple: http://purpleslurple.net/
    [4]QuiP sample: http://sasites.com/quip04.php?url=http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/22/a-better-permalink-or-is-that-purplelink/&text=it%20would%20be%20really%20amazingly%20cool%20if%20my%20browser%20let%20me%20highlight%20part%20of%20a%20text%20and%20create%20a%20permalink%20out%20of%20it&title=I%20suppose%20you%20mean%20something%20like%20this.%20–%20MAS#quip

    Like

  75. I think it is important to note that the purple number solutions mentioned here are for publishers and authors of content – not for consumers. In other words the publisher must implement the solution or no purple numbers are available for the consumer. Relative to the Web at larger, not many Web sites implement purple numbers.

    Ahoy is cool in that it enables a _consumer_ of the Web page to link to a particular passage of their choosing, umm, provided the publisher has implemented Ahoy on their web site. I think this would also be the case for the Text Encoding Initiative.

    Two years ago I got around this short coming of Ahoy by transcoding the Ahoy script into the target web page on the fly via a web proxy.[1][2]

    A year or so prior to that I had written PurpleSlurple[3] to transcode purple numbers into web pages on the fly.

    Last year I released QuiP. QuiP reverses the process of creating the granular link, vs PSAhoy, to a more logical sequence, to my mind: Select text to link to, click bookmarklet, optionally add note (something Ahoy doesn’t do)[3].

    Parlor tricks perhaps, but effective enough for my uses, and _importantly_ tools for the consumer.

    [1]PSAhoy post: http://collab.blueoxen.net/forums/yak/2003-11/msg00069.html
    [2]PSAhoy sample: http://sasites.com/suse/apache/files/psAhoy.php?collapse=yes&theurl=http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/22/a-better-permalink-or-is-that-purplelink/&ahyAnchor=1.1&ahyParentNodeTagName=P&ahyParentNodeIndex=54&ahyChildIndex=1&ahySelectionStart=104&ahySelectionLength=220#ahoyanchor
    [3]PurpleSlurple: http://purpleslurple.net/
    [4]QuiP sample: http://sasites.com/quip04.php?url=http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2005/11/22/a-better-permalink-or-is-that-purplelink/&text=it%20would%20be%20really%20amazingly%20cool%20if%20my%20browser%20let%20me%20highlight%20part%20of%20a%20text%20and%20create%20a%20permalink%20out%20of%20it&title=I%20suppose%20you%20mean%20something%20like%20this.%20–%20MAS#quip

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