Waves and Public Reading
Surf has two ways to let another person read without joining your library. A public reading link shares one document. A wave shares a collection. Both can work without an account. Both can ask for a password.
Sharing is set on the document in your library. Surf is the place the other person reads.
Public reading link
A public reading link opens one surfed document. The owner turns on public reading for that document. The owner can also set a password.
A guest who opens the link sees the latest completed surf of that document. If a new surf finishes later, the same link shows the new result. The guest can zoom, use the outline, and use firehose. The guest cannot save notes or questions to an account.
If the document is not open for public reading, a guest cannot open it. A signed-in person who has access still can.
A password on the link is a gate for guests. Once the guest enters the password, the reader remembers it for that session. A signed-in person with access does not need the password.
Wave
A wave is a shared collection. It has a title. It can have a description. It lists member documents. A person opens the wave from a link and sees that list.
The wave can ask for a password. If it does, the guest enters the password before the list appears. That wave password can stand in for the password on a member document. If the wave has no password, a member document can still ask for its own password.
A wave does not by itself make every member document readable. Each document must also be open for public reading if a guest is going to open it. A member document that is not open for public reading shows as present, but a guest cannot open it. A signed-in person may still open it if they have access.
When you open a document from a wave, the reader keeps you in the wave. You can go back to the wave list instead of to your library.
Guest reading versus signed-in reading
The same surf can serve both kinds of reader.
A guest gets a read-only pass. Zoom, outline, and firehose still work. Notes, questions, and document conversation do not save. The first visit can show a short tour of the zoom model.
A signed-in person gets the full reader. Notes and questions belong to that person. They do not leak to other readers of the same wave or the same public reading link.
If a wave or a public reading link is turned off, the link stops working. The reader will say the wave is gone, or the document is not available to read this way.
Why the two forms exist
A public reading link is for one document. Send it when the other person needs that file only.
A wave is for a set. Send it when the other person should pick among several documents, such as a course pack or a project folder.
Both forms keep the original library as the source. Surf does not become a second library. It only reads what the library has already parsed and surfed.
See Open and Read a Wave for the guest flow. See Surf a Document from Your Library for the owner flow.