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I'm building an e-reader app where "enhancement content" such as illustrations, context-approprate summaries, and group chat can be integrated into the reading

by nfw2 2y ago

I'm building an e-reader app where "enhancement content" such as illustrations, context-approprate summaries, and group chat can be integrated into the reading experience. The way I am connecting external content to the epub is through an anchoring system -- sequences of words can be hashed to form unique ids that are referenced by the enhancement. Doing this lets me index the enhancement content in such a way that is format-independent and doesn't require modifying the underlying epub. The specific task o1 helped me with was determining what the text is visible at any given point in time. This text is then turned into hashes to pull the relevant enhancement content. Getting the current words on the page doesn't seem all that complex, but the epub.js API is pretty confusing. There are abstractions like "Rendition", "Location", "Contents", "Range", and it's not always intuitive which of these will provide the appropriate methods. I'm sure I would have figured it out eventually by looking at the API docs, but GPT probably saved me and hour or two of trial-and-error.

CptFribble 2y ago
> group chat hmm having a sort of mini-forum-like experience tied to particular pages in a book seems like a fascinating idea! being able to discuss plot twists and such only once you've already gotten to that point? wow this seems like an amazing idea actually! any names yet? I'd love to check it out once it's done!
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Interesting. How did you come across this idea. And how long have you been working on it?
- nfw2 2y ago
  I'm not sure when I first had the idea. I read a lot of mystery, but I'm often frustrated trying to remember all the details. A virtual notebook seems like it could help a lot for me personally. My mom and grandma also read books with a physical notebook handy, and seems like modern technology should make that unnecessary. I was laid off as part of the massive layoffs in 2022 and made a first pass at the project. I didn't use epubjs and instead wasted a lot of time making a custom rendering engine -- this was dumb. Eventually I got another job and paused the project. I started again in earnest a month or so ago using epubjs as the base.
  - ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
    Why group chat? Where did you think of that?
    - nfw2 2y ago
      From being in book clubs

by nfw2 2y ago

CptFribble 2y ago

> group chat hmm having a sort of mini-forum-like experience tied to particular pages in a book seems like a fascinating idea! being able to discuss plot twists and such only once you've already gotten to that point? wow this seems like an amazing idea actually! any names yet? I'd love to check it out once it's done!

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

Interesting. How did you come across this idea. And how long have you been working on it?

nfw2 2y ago
I'm not sure when I first had the idea. I read a lot of mystery, but I'm often frustrated trying to remember all the details. A virtual notebook seems like it could help a lot for me personally. My mom and grandma also read books with a physical notebook handy, and seems like modern technology should make that unnecessary. I was laid off as part of the massive layoffs in 2022 and made a first pass at the project. I didn't use epubjs and instead wasted a lot of time making a custom rendering engine -- this was dumb. Eventually I got another job and paused the project. I started again in earnest a month or so ago using epubjs as the base.
- ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
  Why group chat? Where did you think of that?
  - nfw2 2y ago
    From being in book clubs