feat: future feature ideas backlog

[nikazzio]

Summary

Tracking issue for feature ideas that are interesting but not yet prioritized. These require either significant architectural changes, have a narrow audience, or depend on other work being completed first.

Feature ideas

W3C Annotations on the viewer

• Allow users to draw regions on manuscript pages and attach annotations (notes, tags, transcription fragments).
• Standard: W3C Web Annotation Data Model.
• Depends on: deciding the persistence model (SQLite? annotation server? both?).
• Requires: annotation layer in OpenSeadragon/Mirador.

Plugin system for providers

• Allow third-party provider adapters to be installed as plugins.
• Depends on: refactor: replace hardcoded discovery flows with a shared IIIF provider registry #104 (provider registry refactor) being completed first.
• Pattern: entry points or a providers/ plugin directory with auto-discovery.

Import DjVu / METS / TEI sources

• Support non-IIIF digitization formats (DjVu from Internet Archive, METS from German libraries, TEI-encoded texts).
• Niche audience but widens the "universal" scope.
• Each format needs its own adapter — significant effort.

Multi-user / authentication

• Support multiple users with separate libraries and preferences.
• Major architectural change — currently single-user by design.
• Would need: auth system, per-user DB isolation, session management.
• Consider only if the project moves to a hosted/shared deployment model.

Mobile responsive UI

• Make the Studio viewer and Library usable on tablets and phones.
• Significant CSS/layout effort.
• Primary audience is likely desktop (researchers at workstations).
• Could be valuable for "quick check on the go" use cases.

EPUB export

• Export manuscripts as EPUB ebooks with embedded images and transcriptions.
• Smaller audience than PDF but useful for e-reader consumption.
• Depends on: transcription export (feat: enable transcription export formats (TXT, Markdown, ALTO, PAGE XML) #122) being solid first.

Scheduled / automated downloads (cron)

• Allow users to set up recurring downloads from provider collections.
• Useful for monitoring new additions to a library's digital collection.
• Requires: background scheduler, collection watching, notification system.
• Only relevant for power users doing mass digitization monitoring.

How to promote an idea

When an idea here becomes relevant:

1. Create a dedicated issue with full spec and acceptance criteria.
2. Remove it from this list.
3. Assign appropriate priority and labels.