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A Reference Model for Capabilities of Online Readers

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James Tauber edited this page Jun 12, 2017 · 1 revision
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NOTE: this is very much a work in progress and so the actual reference numbers shouldn't be used for more than ephemeral discussions at this point.

The goal of this outline is to provide a structured way of talking about the capabilities of online readers independent of corpus, language, and implementation details. It is also intended to abstract away from most visual design choices (although can be used to structure conversation about visual design choices).

The intention is to provide an underlying framework for discussions of user stories for online readers, reader UX/ID, and, where appropriate, protocol/API design.

My hope is that by having a clear, labelled structure like this, people can compare and discuss UX/ID, API, or visual design choices in a more systematic away.

While my own focus is on web-based readers for classical and biblical Greek, there is no reason this model can't be used for modern language readers and those that are not web-based. For example, while based on the current and planned functionality of the Perseus reader and my own reader prototypes, the capabilities of Kindle and iBooks could be discussed with this model.

Thanks to Sean Harrison for his useful feedback.

A. Selecting Passage to View From Outside Work

  1. How to get to a work by metadata on the work (title, author, etc)
    • (navigating to a work might just be navigating to the first passage in that work)
  2. How to get to a passage by reference (e.g. a bible verse reference)
  3. How to get to a work / passage in a work by search (e.g. a word search)
    • works as results
    • passages as results

B. Changing Passage to View From Inside Work

  1. Navigation between previous and next passages
  2. Navigation between previous and next nodes at a higher level (if hierarchical) (e.g. between chapters if currently navigating between verses; presumably would go to the first passage in that chapter usually)
  3. Zooming in to a narrower passage or out to a wider passage (e.g. Perseus “View text chunked by”)
  4. Random access to different parts of a hierarchical text (Perseus browse bar or table of contents or clickable progress bar in some readers)
  5. Searching within work

C. Viewing the Passage

  1. Text of a passage (just the words, punctuation, and inter-word spaces)
  2. Formatting of a passage (paragraphs, quotations, poetry, etc)
  3. Overall reader styling (font size, spacing, contrast, display preferences)
  4. An indication of what passage I’m looking at (title/reference)
  5. An indication of milestones within a passage (e.g. verse numbers)
  6. A graphical indication of where the passage I’m looking at fits in to the larger work (e.g. the read-only version of Perseus browse bar, or a progress bar in some readers)

D. Annotation

  1. Annotation at word level:
    • through styling / colour
    • through interlinear glossing
    • through hover/pop-up
    • through sidebar
  2. Annotated word groups (bracketing, indentation, boxing, etc)
  3. Annotated links (dependency, governance, anaphora, co-reference, etc)

E. Synchronised Reading

  1. Synchronised parallel reading
  2. Synchronised reference material (e.g. commentaries, maps, citations, marginalia)