Anyone familiar with Kindle plugin page count?

[bfollowell]

Is anyone familiar with how Calibre does the page number calculations for the Kindle?

I like this new feature but I'd like to find a way to make it more accurate, assuming there is anything at all I can do to influence its calculations in any way. I have a book I'm currently reading that shows 219 pages. If I check the slow but more accurate option it registers 242 page. The actual paper book has 292 pages. At best, it's off by about 20%.

I know some of my ebooks actually have built-in anchors showing what corresponds to a certain page in the paper book. Unfortunately, niether Calibre or my Kindle seem to make use of these.

Is there anything I can do, tags or anchors I can add to flag pages that would improve this?

I just want to make it clear that I'm not complaining about the feature. I'm merely trying to find a way to improve on it. Thanks guys and thanks to Kovid for this wonderful tool.

Sincerely,
- Byron

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by bfollowell

Is anyone familiar with how Calibre does the page number calculations for the Kindle?

Read through the plugin thread to see how the algorithm works.

Originally Posted by bfollowell

I have a book I'm currently reading that shows 219 pages. If I check the slow but more accurate option it registers 242 page. The actual paper book has 292 pages. At best, it's off by about 20%.

I would guess that calibre's viewer shows 400+ pages for that book. Personally it isn't that important to me. Don't the various paper versions (hardback, paperback, large print editions) have different page counts too?

Good Luck in your quest.

[bfollowell]

Wrong plugin. It isn't the stand-alone page count plugin. The one I'm referring to is the Kindle 2/3 device plugin that does page count specifically for that device. Of course, it may work in a similar way so I'll check out the thread but I just wanted to clear that up.

Thanks.

- Byron

[kiwidude]

@bfollowell - the Count Pages plugin thread that dwanthny referred you to is probably one of the better places in terms of most recent conversations on exactly this topic. As that plugin does call the exact same code that you are talking about when counting pages in MOBI files (unless you choose a different algorithm). I had to apply a similar methodology for ePub files and spent a LOT of time fiddling and tweaking and comparing with paperback counts. As I posted on that thread (and am sure user_none will confirm) you really are going to struggle to find any way of getting the two reconciled in terms of page counts without actually reading the count off the website. Even then, different editions of the book have different page counts (large print vs hardback vs paperback) so there is no "one true answer" even if you could figure out a better algorithm.

All that happens when you start tweaking is that you get numbers that are closer for some books, but then are further away for others. There is a fundamental disconnect between an html version of a book and a printed page that means you have no chance (without further markers within the book) of trying to get them close every time, even if you can agree on which count you are trying to get close to!

[bfollowell]

Thanks guys. It's not worth that much to me. I was just curious. I am interested enough that I will read through the thread though. Thanks to both of you for the info.

- Byron