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I usually find myself fighting with other annotations. Generally I gloss characters I cannot read or that are read as alternative readings, (such is the way with ancient languages) the actual range of annotations available is a research field in itself. It's also enjoyable to see the range other annotations have come up with.
For late ancient Chinese scholars, or even the older scholars today, there seems to have been a tradition of trying to leave a masterwork of annotation as a testament to ones career achievements. In that light, I have found annotations perhaps the most undervalued thing we have when it comes to scholarship in English. We generally publish with few annotations in English, compared with the great continental traditions (exemplified by the great German scholars of the 19th century).
In general notes are devided into two groups, notes on the meaning of words, and then exegesis.
I tend to only write notes on meanIng and not notes on interpretation. The interpretation I just memorize for a later day.
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Some notes in Celtic manuscripts are the explanations which scholar monks brought to the works, some are short creative pieces in their own right - perhaps inspired by the reading- and some are mere interpolations to the mundane - cuimhne an cat a cuir a mach (remember to put the cat out!)
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Ha ha! Gle eibhinn a dhuine! It's from a manuscript like those that the poem "Pangur Ban" originated mus math m chuimhne!
