Category:PurpleNumbers

Purple Numbers allow a finer grain access to web pages. It let's us link to a specific paragraphs or bullet point inside a web page, rather than merely taking us to the top of that page like url's normally do.

On wiki's (or other applications) where Purple Numbers are supported, all one needs to do is to mouse-over a Purple Number, right-mouse-click and COPY that hyperlink (on the IE browser, it's "Copy Shortcut", and on the Netscape browser, it's "Copy Link Location"). One can then PASTE this hyperlink to an e-mail message, to your instant message, or to a document s/he is composing. That link will now take its reader back to exactly the same paragraph the author wanted to refer his/her reader(s) to.

If you are not familiar with Purple Numbers you may want to read up on Doug Engelbart's work on Open Hyperdocument System (OHS) and high resolution addressability. See also Eugene Eric Kim's “An Introduction to Purple”, Eric Armstrong's comments on granular addressability, and Matthew Schneider's PurpleSlurple.

Examples:

• linking to a paragraph on this wiki - http://community.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nidF
• linking to a section on another wiki - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/#nid011
• linking to a paragraph within an archived forum message - http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2002-09/msg00000.html#nid03
• linking to a section within a paper published on the web - http://ps1.cim3.net/ps.php?theurl=http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-webont-req-20040210/#purp290

Try putting PurpleNumbers on existing web pages with PurpleSlurple at: http://ps1.cim3.net/ps.php (Important: be fully aware, though, that the persistence of Purple Numbers thus created are dependent on the peristence of the source web page.)

For a little history on Purple Numbers, see: http://community.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PurpleNumbers#nidAAL

PurpleNumbers are used fundamentally by the PurpleWiki wiki engine.