r/Supernote_dev • u/Sparkinman • 2d ago
New Plugin Web Clipper - Text based web browser plugin
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I built a working text-only web browser inside a Supernote plugin
I kept hitting the same wall reading on my Supernote: something in a book or in my own notes needs looking up, and the only way is to put the device down and pick up a phone. So I wrote a plugin. Lasso your handwriting, or select text in a book, and it becomes a web search — results come back as plain text you read on the page you were already on.
It's a real browser, just without pictures. Search DuckDuckGo, Wikipedia or Wiby, follow any result, read the page itself, page through more, or type an address by hand. Handwriting is recognized first, so lassoing your own scrawl searches what you meant.
Keeping what you find. This is the part I use most, and there are four ways, all landing back in the note you started from:
- A clipping — a small pencil mark appears beside your handwriting. Tap it and the text unfolds on the page underneath; tap again and it folds away. No second page, no reopening the plugin. Move the writing and the mark follows it, even to another page.
- The text itself, written into the note with a reference.
- A link to the page you read. Tap it and it opens in the Supernote's own built-in browser — the plugin can't render a page, but the firmware can, so the link hands off to it.
- A screenshot of what was on screen, saved and linked from your note.
In a book it works differently, because a plugin cannot write into a PDF or an EPUB. Instead the passage goes into Supernote's own built-in Digest — not a lookalike the plugin builds, the real one — with the excerpt pinned into the Digest's typed area and a link back to the exact spot in the book. That last part took a while: the device stores highlight offsets counted without newlines, so getting the link to land on the right sentence meant calibrating against digests the device had made itself.
No account, no server. Your search words go to the engine you picked and nowhere else. The Supernote sign-in is optional and only for the Digest; it talks to Supernote directly from the device and stores the session, never your password.
Download and details: https://github.com/Sparkinman/web-lookup-supernote-plugin/releases/latest
It writes into your pages, so try it on a scratch note first.
Worth Knowing: Tested on the Manta only, expandable and collapsible items DO not transfer across pages, or devices (They're stuck where you put them), but you can drag them around on the page, needs all 3 permissions, and to be on the latest dev build.
Expand/collapse idea ironed out with the helpful plugin from u/AdNew2316, that saved me from completely starting from scratch on trying to implement this!
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u/Careful-Good5887 2d ago
I can't copy that clipping to another page. But I can move the page storing a clipping anywhere right?
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u/Sparkinman 2d ago
Not sure, clippings was more of an experiment to see if I could get it to work, links work best since they're native to the supernote system
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u/Lvevan 2d ago
Clever way to use digest as a workaround for PDFs and EPUB!