Support for user-selection of content across spread-boundaries

[rkwright]

This is a DISCUSSION.

Expected Behaviour

Users would like to be able to select text across a two-page spread.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open an EPUB document with a two-page spread
2. Verify that the two page spread is visible and each page is separately selectable.
3. Try to select some text ACROSS the two pages (i.e. some text from each page)

Observed behaviour

Only text from one page can be selected

Test file(s)

Any EPUB with a two-page spread.

Product

*Any Readium-based software demonstrates this limitation

Additional information

None at this time

[JayPanoz]

Pinging @SeldomScene as he had to deal with this issue and may provide useful insights – if he’s comfortable doing so, obviously.

[jccr]

I wish browsers would allow multiple selections to be made, it's in the spec and in the API. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Selection/rangeCount window.getSelection().getRangeAt(1) window.getSelection().getRangeAt(2)

In FF you can hold Ctrl and make multiple non-continuous selections. In Chrome you can't.

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I could see that concept being adopted for selections across iframes. Implemented in a way that wouldn't have the user use Ctrl: Two selection ranges would be made on behalf of the user automatically.

It would be nice to have a selection API that's scoped to the whole publication without worrying about the different iframe window contexts. It makes things simpler, maybe if you can get past the security concerns. This is a supplementary idea.