Afnota

Afnota is a term that has appeared in discussions of digital text annotation and footnote management. In general usage, afnota denotes a formal approach to attaching notes to passages in a way that is both human-readable and machine-processable.

Etymology: The name combines the prefix af- (from Latin roots and related languages suggesting separation or after) with nota, Latin for note. The term began circulating in online communities in the early 2020s to describe annotation schemas.

Definition and scope: Afnota describes a family of annotation conventions intended to unify how notes are attached to content, stored, and rendered. It differentiates between inline notes, marginal notes, and endnotes, and it supports linking to bibliographic sources and to the location within the text. It aims to enable export to multiple formats such as HTML, PDF, and EPUB while preserving note metadata.

Components: A typical afnota model includes a note object with an identifier, content, metadata (author, date, version), and a reference to the text location. Relations allow multiple notes per passage, nested notes, and versioning to track changes over time.

Implementation and status: Several experimental projects implement afnota-like schemas, often using JSON, XML, or RDF-like structures. Because there is no formal standard body governing afnota, implementations vary in syntax and features, and adoption remains limited to specific communities.

Usage and examples: In practice, afnota-inspired annotations appear in digital editions, scholarly repositories, and content management systems. A simple example stores a note as {'id':'N1','content':'Source: ...','location':'para-42'} and renders it as a linked footnote. As of this article, afnota remains a conceptual framework rather than a universally adopted standard.

See also: Footnotes, Annotations, Markup languages.