TheRewrite

Dive in and collectively annotate, explore and diversify literature through engaging discussions.

Initial Situation

Through the FHNW Lehrfonds project The Rewrite Collaborative Framework (2020-21), a browser extension was developed that enables the annotation of HTML-based texts online. The resulting prototype is based on hypothesis.js and was used to annotate various documents. The tool was available as a google chrome extension. Due to a change in Google’s Chrome store and insufficient funds, the extension is currently hard to install and not always intuitive to use.

Project Goal

The goal is to make the tool more widely available (as a web app) and easier to use. In short, we want to turn the browser extension into a web application incl. website that provides an archive of projects. Everyone on the web should be able to create a collective, add participants, upload multiple texts, and determine the annotation criteria themselves. This will allow for users to create a discussion framework for each reading group, tailored to the subject matter.

Developed Solution and its benefit

The developed solution offers a robust platform for collaboratively annotating PDFs and sharing discussions and opinions. This tool enables users to upload PDFs and initiate collaboration by sharing an invitation link, fostering seamless teamwork on document annotation and discussion.

Here is a list of what features have been done:

• Possibility to create an account and log in with your account
• PDFs can be uploaded to an account
• PDFs can be shared with invitation links and they are only accessible with the link
• Possibility to annotate PDFs with highlights, underline, squiggly lines, sidebars, post its and tiny texts
• Multiple categories with different colors for annotating
• Comments for other annotations specifically and create discussion with this
• Edit / Delete options for everything

Our product is an expansion of the browser extension (hypothesis.js), which is now available as a web application.

Testemonial
«The project has been a great learning experience for both sides. Coming from art and research backgrounds, it was fascinating for us to witness the agile process first-hand. The students quickly understood the context of the project and the challenges involved. They gathered new know-how fast to tackle core technical problems of the project early on. The support of the experienced coach was excellent for successfully steering the collaboration throughout the process.»
Moritz Greiner-Petter

Key terms

• Programming languagesJava & JavaScript
• Frontend Stack React
• Backend Stack Springboot
• DatabasePostgreSQL
• Deployment PlatformSWITCHengines

Client

IXDM Critical Media Lab
Institute Experimental Design and Media Cultures (IXDM)
Freilager-Platz 1
CH-4142 Basel
criticalmedialab.ch

Team