Locators

Locators are meant to provide a precise location in a publication in a format that can be stored and shared.

There are many different use cases for locators:

• reporting and saving the current progression
• bookmarks
• highlights & annotations
• search results
• human-readable (as-in shareable) references
• jumping to a location
• enhancing a table of contents

Each locator must contain a reference to a resource in a publication (href and type). href must not point to the fragment of a resource.

It may also contain:

• a title (title)
• one or more locations in a resource (grouped together in locations)
• one or more text references, if the resource is a document (text)

The locator Object

Key	Definition	Format	Required
href	The URI of the resource that the Locator Object points to.	URI	Yes
type	The media type of the resource that the Locator Object points to.	Media Type	Yes
title	The title of the chapter or section which is more relevant in the context of this locator.	String	No
locations	One or more alternative expressions of the location.	Location Object	No
text	Textual context of the locator.	Text Object	No

The location Object

Key	Definition	Format	Required
fragments	Contains one or more fragment in the resource referenced by the Locator Object.	Array of strings	No
progression	Progression in the resource expressed as a percentage.	Float between 0 and 1	No
position	An index in the publication.	Integer where the value is > 0	No
totalProgression	Progression in the publication expressed as a percentage.	Float between 0 and 1	No

Additional locations may also be included in this object, using an extension officially registered on this repository or a URI.

The following extensions are currently registered:

Name	Description
HTML Extension	Additional locations for HTML/XHTML documents.

The text Object

A Locator Text Object contains multiple text fragments, useful to give a context to the Locator or for highlights.

Key	Definition	Format	Required
after	The text after the locator.	String	No
before	The text before the locator.	String	No
highlight	The text at the locator.	String	No

Fragments

Given the flexible nature of the Readium Web Publication Manifest, we need the ability to provide locations into all sorts of resources (text, audio, video, images).

Fragments are flexible enough to achieve that goal. They also provide a natural extension point for our locator model since any media-type can define its own fragment identifiers.

They’re by nature media-specific and should always be understood in the context of the resource that the locator points to (by looking at href and type).

For this purpose, this document identifies the following specifications along with their scope:

Specification	Scope	Examples
HTML	HTML or XHTML	id
Media Fragment URI 1.0	Audio, Video and Images	t=67, xywh=160,120,320,240
PDF	PDF	page=12, viewrect=50,50,640,480

Examples

Example 1: Pointing to the start of Pride and Prejudice

{
  "href": "http://example.com/chapter1",
  "type": "text/html",
  "title": "Chapter 1",
  "locations": {
    "position": 4,
    "progression": 0.03401,
    "totalProgression": 0.01349
  },
  "text": {
    "after": "It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife."
  }
}

Example 2: Pointing somewhere in the middle of an audiobook

{
  "href": "http://example.com/track6",
  "type": "audio/ogg",
  "title": "Chapter 5",
  "locations": {
    "fragments": ["t=389.84"],
    "progression": 0.607379,
    "totalProgression": 0.50678
  }
}

Example 3: Pointing to a rectangle in a page of a PDF

{
  "href": "http://example.com/document",
  "type": "application/pdf",
  "title": "Page 5",
  "locations": {
    "fragments": ["page=5", "viewrect=50,50,640,480"],
    "progression": 0.12703,
    "totalProgression": 0.12703
  }
}

Best Practices

In addition to defining the Locator model, the Readium community also strongly recommend all implementations to follow a number of best practices:

• Best practices for locators per format
• Best practices for calculating locations

Appendix A - JSON Schema

A reference JSON Schema is available under version control at: https://github.com/readium/architecture/tree/master/schema/locator.schema.json

This site is open source. Improve this page.