So not only were these early e-lit efforts probably created using non-open software, they were distributed using now-obsolete physical media? I hope someone somewhere has backed them all up to modern formats and media.

By adding the absolute word "cannot" (though softened perhaps a bit by adding "meaningful way"), this seems a narrower definition than the previous one, which I'm fine with.

BTW, if this e-lit course is held a second time, you'll have to find new pages to annotate, as these ones have already slowed to a crawl with all the multiple highlights over the same text. I hope the devs of Hypothes.is are watching!

Okay, I get what's being said here and I agree, e-lit is probably more than just digitised books, but how long has it been since most "traditional" book authors hand-wrote or manually typed their books on paper? It seems to me that "traditional" authors frequently, perhaps typically, create their works "in confrontation with technology", whether it be MS Word for a novel or shorter work (and all the interactive formatting and restructuring it allows), Final Draft for scripts, not to mention all those author-assist programs out there that help with structure and formatting.

Nowadays, even paper novels are created on computers.

But still, I think I know what they're groping towards in their definition of e-lit. My short version:

E-Lit is "literature" (something that is primarily text-based) that is created mostly on computer/s, for delivery and consumption/exploration mostly via computer/s.

Left undefined is "computers", which is going to get harder and harder to strap down in the future - will augmented reality via VR headwear count? :-)

Computer isn't defined here, and perhaps doesn't need to be, but it could include something as simple as a calculator used to help determine the outcome of "battles", and hence which page to turn to next in the story.

Adding text to a highlight makes it a note (and gives you the chance to make it public), whereas highlights default to private I think).

This is a note - I'm not 100% sure what the difference is between notes and highlighting, yet, since we can add comments to notes and notes generate highlights?