--- layout: post status: publish published: true title: ! 'Rockaby: text annotation software [GPL, alpha, announcement]' wordpress_id: 415 wordpress_url: http://www.martineve.com/?p=415 date: !binary |- MjAxMC0xMS0xOSAxNjo1NzoyOSArMDEwMA== date_gmt: !binary |- MjAxMC0xMS0xOSAxNjo1NzoyOSArMDEwMA== categories: - Literature - Technology - Open Access - Academia - Django tags: - Technology - rockaby - GPL comments: - id: 3567 author: Rockaby refactoring and abstraction | Martin Paul Eve author_email: '' author_url: http://www.martineve.com/2010/12/02/rockaby-refactoring-and-abstraction/ date: !binary |- MjAxMC0xMi0wMiAwOTo1Mzo1MSArMDEwMA== date_gmt: !binary |- MjAxMC0xMi0wMiAwOTo1Mzo1MSArMDEwMA== content: ! '[...] I mentioned in my project announcement, Rockaby started life several years ago and it was a quick morning’s worth of hacking about [...]' ---

Rockaby
till in the end
the day came
in the end came
close of a long day
when she said
to herself
whom else
time she stopped
-- Samuel Beckett, Rockaby

Today marks the first release of the source for my book annotation software, Rockaby. At present, the base installation is up and running at http://gr.pynchon.net/ which forms the Online Gravity's Rainbow Reference.

So, what is Rockaby.
Rockaby is a tool to annotate long, complex, or otherwise require-explanation texts. It features a footnote referencing system, automatic character and reference index linkup and a plethora of other features.

Here's the homepage:
Gravity's Rainbow Reference running Rockaby

...and an example of the automated reference generation:
Rockaby referencing

What stage is it at?
Rockaby was originally written in .NET, but I have just spent the last day or so converting it to Django and this is the released form. As such, the code is new and has several setbacks:

I, therefore, would be very interested to hear from any Django developers who would like to participate.

How is it licensed?
The project is licensed under GPL v3.

How can I get the source?
The source code is hosted at the Google Code repository. If you have some improvements/patches, email me (or comment below) and, pending review, I can add you to the team.

Why the name?
In addition to referencing one of my favourite plays, it also functions, from the quotation above, as an auto-critical statement on exegesis.