One big roadblock for environments hoping to improve on the book with fancy interactive elements: they all require reading on a screen! And reading on a screen is almost universally terrible!
I've been getting increasingly worried about this—seems like a serious threat! (con't)
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For instance, expert readers generally read non-linearly, but object permanence issues really inhibit that on screens. (notes.andymatuschak.org/Maintaining_mu, notes.andymatuschak.org/Continuous-scr)
In many cases (eg. on e-readers) *performance* issues inhibit expert reading! Wild! (notes.andymatuschak.org/Poor_performan)
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Of course there are on-screen features which enhance expert reading… but on balance, I'm pretty reliably a worse reader when reading on screens.
Not thrilled about needing to solve those problems in addition to all the tools-for-thought ones! What do you find promising here?
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I tend to do digital book reading in PDF rather than ePub too (Google Play's "original pages" feature is a godsend). PDF software at least isn't *laughably* bad, but it's still so dang impoverished for reading as a real use case.
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Back in my PhD days, a huge advantage of PDFs was the non-destructive destruction they afford: infinitely flexible highlighting, move pages around and ‘tear them out’ or recombine into new files, etc, all while keeping the original intact. Commonplace books for the 21st century.
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If only the software took those kinds of activities deeply seriously… :/
i have to say, Preview makes it very easy to highlight and remove / recombine pages. just use the thumbnail sidebar. i use it often!
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Yes, and tools like PDF Expert or Highlights go even further with notes exporting, url schemes, or split view. All that info still needs to go somewhere, ideally keeping a link between the original file and these ‘byproducts of reading’ - that’s been the biggest barrier/timesuck.
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Sure! The biggest gap for me though is a cross-platform database that is built for that kind of recombination (as opposed to jury-rigging something with DevonThink or similar which stops working the minute you stop maintaining the system with all its intricacies).