Sharing selected text in reader should include URL of selected text node

[rhoadsstevens]

Expected Behavior

If I highlight text in a Manifold book, and if I share it via Twitter, then that exact text should be shared.

Current Behavior

If I highlight text in a Manifold book, and if I select share and try to share that text via Twitter, then a link is created that goes to the wrong portion of the book.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Go to this Manifold book: https://uw.manifoldapp.org/projects/war-and-peace
2. Highlight the first line of XVIII. It's this: "Countess Rostóva, with her daughters and a large number of guests, was already seated in the drawing room."
3. Click "share," click "Twitter," and you will end up with this link: uw.manifoldapp.org/read/war-and-peace/section/9b9e6333-0774-4360-b033-e829afcb437a
4. The link goes to the beginning of XVII.

Context (Environment)

There are many different versions of War and Peace, so in a reading group, people might be struggling to get onto the same page. If these shared links of lines worked, then everyone would be able to get onto the same page. But if they don't work, then it compounds the problem, or it makes the shared-link feature something that people will avoid.

[zdavis]

The epub that was ingested includes multiple chapters per epub section. You'll notice that the URL for chapter 2 is the same as the URL for chapter 1, only with an anchor link appended to it. There's not really a viable way for Manifold to know that the text the user selected belonged to chapter 2, given the structure of this epub. To know this, Manifold would have to parse the content of the section and determine that the selected text appeared below an anchor that was included in the TOC—and that would be a non-trivial task.

That said, I do agree that the selected text should be included in the social share. Because every text node has a unique URL, which we use to backlink from an annotation to the text, we have the basics in place to accomplish this. It will take some development on the sharing component, but I think it's a reasonable request.

I'm updating the title of this issue to better reflect what we could do to address this. This is a place where it would be nice to enhance existing functionality, not a "malfunction," at least not in the sense my team and I think about bugs/errors. Thanks for reporting this, Elliott!

-ZD

[zdavis]

Thank you for taking the time to open this feature request. The Manifold team reviewed this issue during our bi-weekly meeting and the consensus is that this feature makes sense and is in keeping with our overall vision for the platform. Moreover, we see this request as a viable candidate for development under our current available funding. We’re adding an “accepted” label to this request to indicate that it’s within scope and possibly within budget.

The next step is for us to estimate the work involved with this and add it to our feature backlog. Our acceptance of the issue is not a promise that it will be implemented. We will balance this request against the other accepted requests and do our best to implement it within our current available funding.

This was an automated message, but please don't hesitate to reply. Our team watches these issues closely and will respond as soon as we're able to!

[rhoadsstevens]

Thank you so much, Zach, for these updates.

I think any changes to the search feature and social sharing feature will be excellent.

People are really enjoying the Manifold book! I’ve been reading it along, too, and I really appreciate how easy the book is to read and use—not to mention set up. Unlike other platforms, I think one of Manifold’s strengths is that you can set up a book in less than 5 minutes.

E

From: Zach Davis [email protected] Sent: Monday, March 23, 2020 12:21 PM To: ManifoldScholar/manifold [email protected] Cc: Elliott Stevens [email protected]; Author [email protected] Subject: Re: [ManifoldScholar/manifold] Link sharing malfunction (#2670)

The epub that was ingested includes multiple chapters per epub section. You'll notice that the URL for chapter 2 is the same as the URL for chapter 1, only with an anchor link appended to it. There's not really a viable way for Manifold to know that the text the user selected belonged to chapter 2, given the structure of this epub. To know this, Manifold would have to parse the content of the section and determine that the selected text appeared below an anchor that was included in the TOC—and that would be a non-trivial task.

That said, I do agree that the selected text should be included in the social share. Because every text node has a unique URL, which we use to backlink from an annotation to the text, we have the basics in place to accomplish this. It will take some development on the sharing component, but I think it's a reasonable request.

I'm updating the title of this issue to better reflect what we could do to address this. This is a place where it would be nice to enhance existing functionality, not a "malfunction," at least not in the sense my team and I think about bugs/errors. Thanks for reporting this, Elliott!

-ZD

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