Purple Numbers is a suite of tools that allows one to address paragraphs of HTML content. It was originally conceived by Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Engelbart

Douglas Carl Engelbart is an American inventor, and an early computer and internet pioneer. He is best known for his work on the challenges of human-computer interaction, resulting in the invention of the computer mouse, and the development of hypertext, networked computers, and precursors to GUIs...

 for his creation of hypertext. The concept was later implemented in PurpleWiki by Eugene Eric Kim and Chris Dent

Chris Dent

Christopher David James Dent is an English cricketer. He is a left-handed batsman who plays for Gloucestershire. He was born in Bristol....

. The name comes from the faint, purple numbers at the end of each paragraph, which represent the link to that paragraph. The name was coined by Christina Engelbart, Doug's daughter.

Other Implementations

• WinerLinks
• Purple Slurple
• NYTimes Emphasis

See also

• XPointer
  XPointer
  XPointer is a system for addressing components of XML based internet media.XPointer is divided among four specifications: a "framework" which forms the basis for identifying XML fragments, a positional element addressing scheme, a scheme for namespaces, and a scheme for XPath-based addressing...
  
  
• Transclusion
  Transclusion
  In computer science, transclusion is the inclusion of a document or part of a document into another document by reference.For example, an article about a country might include a chart or a paragraph describing that country's agricultural exports from a different article about agriculture...
  
  
• Tumbler, a proposal for addressing documents at the bit level
• Web annotation
  Web annotation
  A web annotation is an online annotation associated with a web resource, typically a web page. With a Web annotation system, a user can add, modify or remove information from a Web resource without modifying the resource itself...
  
  
• Cross-reference
  Cross-reference
  A cross-reference is an instance within a document which refers to related or synonymous information elsewhere, usually within the same work. To cross-reference or to cross-refer is to make such connections. The term "cross-reference" is often abbreviated as x-ref, xref, or, in computer science,...
  
  

External links

• An Introduction to Purple
• PurpleWiki uses Purple Numbers
• Purple MediaWiki: Fine-Grained Addressability of Wiki Content (pdf) (April, 2008)