One of the main goals of the platform is to create a reading experience that allows seamless reading without visual noise (visual clutter) but at the same time provides specialized auxiliary tools that support the study/learning of the reader if he so wishes.
The utilities are divided into two main categories
- User learning aids (adding notes, underlining)
- Semantic annotation display tools (editing and text enrichment by editors using digital humanities standards such as the TEI Guidelines (https://tei-c.org/).
Helpful user learning tools (user generated content)
Selecting text displays the option to highlight or highlight with comment (highlight & comment)
The following functionalities are provided to assist learning:
- Highlight: The user selects the desired piece of text and a UI component appears which gives them the option to create a highlight. As long as we choose to add highlighting, the selected text acquires a background.
- Highlighting and adding a comment (highlight & comment): The user can type an accompanying text in his highlight.
At any time the user can use the navigation menu, where the list of bookmarks and notes he has created is displayed in the notes menu. This way we can quickly refer to all our highlights without having to go through all the text.
View semantic annotations
One of the key innovations of the reading platform is the integration and display of marked/enriched (encoded) content in the reading interface. A basic condition for this operation is the processing and curation of the content before its electronic publication.
As part of the study and experimental development of the reading platform, we used the TEI Guidelines to establish an operational annotation methodology that exploits elements of texts in a way that cannot be replicated by a printed version. The digital text/edition can be a stand-alone product or work in addition to a paper.
Examples of items that can be highlighted are:
- Images
- Pages
- Symbols and points
- Quotes
- Abbreviations
- Lists
- Notes
- Characters
- Organisations
- Locations
- Objects
- Languages
- Dates & time
- Scenes and points of interest
- Thematics
The reader has the option to simply read the text or activate the notes embedded in the text. These notes appear within the text without redirecting the user to a new page forcing them to lose visual contact with the main text.
Example of displaying an embedded note at the bottom of the user’s devices screen.
