"Locations" vs. Pages in K3 - AAAAAAAH!

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

So what printed page is Sony's page number based on? Hardcover? Trade Paperback? Mass Market Paperback? US version or UK?

I just don't get people's beef with locations at all. They give you a quick and easy way to determine exactly where you are in a book. What good would it do to give you the corresponding "page number" of a version of the book that you're NOT currently reading?

A page number is a reference point in the book you are reading. A location number is a reference point in the book you are reading. Is the main beef really all about terminology?

That's pretty much what I was thinking.

Clearly, the REAL solution is...Word Count. Each page should be "numbered" by the first word on the screen, as exhibited. The "number" would be that word's numerical position relative to the first word of the first sentence of the first paragraph of the book. Thus, the first screen of text would always be "1" since that would be the number of the first word in the book.

Of course, things could get a bit unwieldy halfway through the book. So after ten thousand words, we could start over, using the alphabet to indicate a ten thousand word cohort. So the first ten thousand words would be a1 through a9999, then we'd progress to b1 through b9999, c1 to c9999, and straight on till sunrise.

Or we could use locations...

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by gca3020

Don't even get me started of F to C conversions. In my world, 35 degrees is freezing cold, and no one will ever be able to convince me that Celcius (centigrade?) makes more sense for weather reports. Chemistry, maybe, but when the difference between a sweltering day and a freezing cold day is only a handful of degrees, the system is broken.

Yes, there is nothing like a system in which "100 means nothing at all..., 96 used to mean something but doesn't anymore, and 0 is colder than it ever gets in Denmark."

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/...nd-212-boiling

Personally, I'm opposed to rationalized systems of measurement. My experience of life is that when someone tries to be rational, they go crazy.

[JMikeD]

Deleted

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by foghat

Not to go way off on a tangent, but the system is broken?? 0C water freezes, 100C water boils. Simple. You exagerate greatly in saying a handful of degrees is the difference between freezing day and a sweltering day.

Granted each 2 or 3 degrees does make a reasonable difference in temperature - which is a good thing. Of course it comes down to what you are used to.

The problem is that human beings, living in normal environments, use only about the first 40 degrees of the C scale, together with a few of the degrees under zero. The other 60 degrees have no meaning until you get to 100, at which point the meaning is just "don't stick your hand in it." Those degrees are wasted, and can't even be recycled or donated to charity.

The C scale is a scientific scale. But most of us live our lives in a very unscientific fashion.

And we don't want change all that much, even when we embrace it, which is why many people don't like locations when they've been using pages all their lives. Our children, however, will view "location" as normal. They will have to be taught to understand what "page" means when they encounter the concept. Sort of like kids these days would have to be taught how to use a rotary dial on a "telephone." Note that we still "dial" our cellphones, even when we punch the numbers or, these days, scroll & touch.

[emalvick]

I know we are on a tangent now, but the C scale only seems odd or limited if you are in America. Heck, I am in California but have been out of the US enough to prefer C. So what if it is seemingly only limited to 40 degrees in terms of climate. I find F fairly worthless outside of a 70 degree range (I'm in California after all). What I find more annoying is that people will nit pick on 1 degree here and there. At least in Celcius's 1.8 deg F / degree C, a degree has more meaning. I also like the idea that negative means sub-freezing.

As for locations. I like them. As a former graduate student, I could see issues with them, but I actually think they would work better than pages. I rarely quoted books, but it was always annoying to look for references that were books and wonder whether I had the right book or not because its page numbers didn't match or the specific page wasn't right. Fortunately, I dealt with papers more often which are starting to do away with pages all together since they are often published as PDFs and are actually looked at more based on word content and the area the text / figures / tables occupy.

However, I do wonder how bad things would be if a system were worked out with the locations being divided by 10 from what they are and then expressed with decimals... i.e. what if location 103 was now location 10.3 and location 1324 was 132.4. Perhaps it could even go as far as letting the user decide whether he/she wants to see that much info.... i.e. show location 132 instead of 132.4, but make it optional.

[TenaciousBadger]

Originally Posted by gca3020

Anyway, I think my greatest takeaway from these locations vs. pages threads is that for a quick conversion, just divide by 10. E.g. location 2046-52 is really page ~204.6. Why Amazon couldn't just do this from the get-go, I don't know, since it would probably save hundreds of virtual trees worth of message board posts.

Originally Posted by foghat

Yep. Divide by 10. Even easier, just drop the last digit.

just felt i needed to add a caveat: this shortcut refers solely to the ebook "pages" without any connection to its dead tree version.
for instance i have a kindle book with 5870 locations but amazon says the print version only has 384 pages so we can safely say you can't equate one with the other.

[Piper_]

Originally Posted by foghat

And as a side note: this is one reason why locations are preferable to page numbers - the location cited will get your professor to the the 'page' in question no matter what reading device or font size he is using. This of course assumes he is viewing the kindle version of the book or some other version/reader that supports locations.

Yes, and to be reliable, it would also have to be the exact same Kindle ebook file of that title.

What most people who like locations and think they should be standard fail to consider is that locations count the markup as well as the text the reader can see.

This makes them a failure as a standard, because different formats - and even different files of the same title - use different markup.

e.g., not only do epub versions and mobi versions of a title have vastly different locations, but so even can two mobi editions, even if the two books look identical to the reader.

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Cite by locations and specify they are Kindle eBook locations. They are far more accurate than pBook locations which can vary from edition to edition.

See above. Locations do not remain consistent across editions, even within the same format.

Originally Posted by wongdong

I wouldn't use the locations. It would mean everyone following your citation needs to buy the kindle version (as no other reading device supports this arbitrary numbering method). Instead, use the percentage. That can be mapped to the paper version too. Take comma percentage if the book is large (Some books are more than 10 pagebreaks per percent, meaning one page is 0,1 additional percent.

Thats the only citation method I would accept (and I am an assistant professor).

It is definitely true that percentage is reliably computable to the hard copy, but it's only reliable if the percentage is calculated by visible text, e.g., screen views.

Percentages that are calculated by bytes are not reliable, as the other person doesn't have that variable to use in his calculation.

Originally Posted by wongdong

If the book has 415 pages it is page 155 or 156. Faaar better than location 2127-40 / 7093

But again, thats only my personal optinion.

But you're right.

Computing bytes to the visible text is like trying to compute how many ounces are in a mile.

BUT:

If I say "screen X of Y," then all the other person needs is his own Y, be it a page of a book or a screen on an any e-reading device, and they can reliably calculate their X of Y.

Originally Posted by thetonyclifton

Why cant they just use page numbers - yes the number of pages in the book will change depending on font size etc but - I dont think it is impossible.

It could simple say Page 8 of 300 and when you increased the font size it recalculated to Page 16 of 380 etc etc - it is not drastically different from the locations info but in a much more user friendly and understandable format.

Looking down the road, I expect that, or possibly a word count, to become the standard, because they would work across formats, and don't depend on publishers' embedding a page number.

Paragraph counts would be optimal, but looking at the markup on most ebooks, it would be a nightmare of ghosts.

Originally Posted by TheKindleWorm

I wish locations were the standard across all ebook devices so it would not matter on what device you read an ebook because citing a location would be the same no matter where you read it.

Except they wouldn't actually be the same at all. An epub version of Little Women will not have the same locations as a .mobi version.

Even two .mobi versions of Little Womens can have different locations. Mark your paragraphs with a <p class="whatever"> instead of a <p>, or add hyperlinks, footnotes, tables, and your locations are shot to heck.



We need a standard, and we need one that accounts for more sophisticated markup as ebooks mature.
Locations will not work as that standard as long as they count hidden bytes.

[RDaneel54]

Here's some numbers for three books (first number is location, second is hard cover, third is mass market paperback):

Flag in Exile - 6741, 416, 480

Echoes of Honor - 11843, 592, 736

War of Honor - 15633, 880, 976

There is no consistent ratio of locations to page numbers.

I will say that 15633 seems really big, but I'd much rather have the e-Book than to carry an 880 page hard cover book or read a 976 page paperback.

Dean

[Viseguy]

I rely on the percent indicator and pretty much ignore the locations while reading. They are occasionally useful, though, to jump to a point distant from the current page.

As I recently said in this post, I wish there were a way to page up and down multiple pages at a time, and to navigate to a "percent read" location:

Originally Posted by Viseguy

I'm new to ereaders -- the K3 is my first. I like the experience a lot, but there is one feature of p-books that I miss: the ability to flip the pages back and forth to find things that I've read or want to read. So I'd like it if the Kindle had one or both of the following features:

1) Alt plus the page-turn keys (or some other key combination) to move backward or forward n pages at a time. Ideally, n would be customizable, but even if it were a fixed value, say 10 pages, that would be something.

2) The ability to go to a "percent read" location rather than a numerical location. I'm more likely to remember that I encountered something 25% of the way into a book than at some 4- or 5-digit location.

Has anyone else asked for features like these? Are they doable?

[Bookworm_Girl]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

A page number is a reference point in the book you are reading. A location number is a reference point in the book you are reading. Is the main beef really all about terminology?

Yes, I think that is exactly the point. Locations and pages are just different labels to express a reference to where you are reading. That's why I like the Kindle progress bar on the screen with the percentage tracker. If the Kindle were my first or only reading experience, then locations would be more intuitive to understand as a unit of measurement. Or, if locations were a universal standard across file formats and devices, then it would also be more relatable as a standard terminology. But other ereaders - like Kobo, Nook, Sony, Apple iBooks app - use page numbers.

I understand that Kindle locations are static. However, it wasn't until I looked again at the Kindle User's Guide that I realized Amazon uses the term pages to refer to what you see on the screen. Thus increase the font and the number of screen turns (and thus pages) increases. It would be nice if they provided the option to display either locations or page count (even if the page count was dynamic). Let the user decide.

The other ereaders mentioned above are primarily used to read EPUB books. EPUB uses the label "page" for a chunk of data that remains static and does not necessarily equal one screen. Therefore, at small font, 3 consecutive screens might show Page 1 * Page 2 * Page 3. At large font, those 3 screens might show Page 1 * Page 1 - 2 * Page 2. The beginning and end page breaks have remained static, but the number of screens to view a page at increased font has changed.

Some people like locations. Some people like pages. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I see the pros and cons of both methods. I just thought I would offer the perspective of a new Kindle user whose prior ereading experiences were built upon other devices and file formats.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Dwayne_Matheson

I wonder how they would designate a page? Locations make sense when you think about it. Each "page" on an ereader depends on font size, margin size and justification.

Not if a page is based on character count, which is what epub pages are and what makes them standard across devices.

[sirmaru]

I use the Kindle WiFi bibles: KJV and NET. Using Direct Verse Jump (by Osnova) I can jump directly to a specific verse. Sony ePub bibles can NOT do this and neither can print bibles. In Bible Studies I am always at the proper location while others are turning print bible pages and getting LOST.

I just type "jn314" and I am directly at John 3:14. That beats all other ways to get to that verse.

With regular books the percentage of book completed is far more important to me than pages or locations.

When I used to read pBooks, I always had to calculate the percentage completed by dividing the current page by the total pages. Kindle simplifies that calculation by showing the result directly on every screen.

The only use I now make of print book pages is to divide them by the price to calculate which book offers a better buy by volume available for reading enjoyment versus price paid.

If one has to cite references, one can use book and chapter references. Kindle WiFi keeps a hard copy file of every highlight and note which can be copied to the PC and printed with proper quotes and references. Sony and B&N do NOT offer this convenience. With print books one can copy a page but then must use an OCR program to get the contents into a Word document.

[foghat]

Originally Posted by Harmon

The problem is that human beings, living in normal environments, use only about the first 40 degrees of the C scale, together with a few of the degrees under zero. The other 60 degrees have no meaning until you get to 100, at which point the meaning is just "don't stick your hand in it." Those degrees are wasted, and can't even be recycled or donated to charity.

Tangent continued...

Well, more like 65 degrees of usefulness where I live. But even going with your 40 degrees. So what if there is only 40 degrees to play with? Each change in degree has meaning. That is perfect - from a non-scientific, 'human being living in normal environments' perspective.

Why have a scale so wide that moving from one degree to the next really doesn't mean much at all (i.e. can't really be felt). When I lived in the States, I looked at temperature in 5 degree chunks, as, in Fahrenheit, a change by a degree or 2 means next to nothing.

[DiapDealer]

Not if a page is based on character count, which is what epub pages are and what makes them standard across devices.

How could it be considered standard when one device may be able to see the whole "page" on one screen and another device may need 3,4 or 5 screens to see the whole "page"?

Look, I have no problem with "pages"... and I have no problem with "locations". I've used devices and software that use a variety of different of methods. None is better or worse than the other. Neither is valid to be used as a standard. I can (and have) adjusted to either with little trouble.

I just refuse to believe that epub's "pages" are better because they've stuck a nostalgic word in front of their arbitrarily determined character count.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by DiapDealer

How could it be considered standard when one device may be able to see the whole "page" on one screen and another device may need 3,4 or 5 screens to see the whole "page"?

Look, I have no problem with "pages"... and I have no problem with "locations". I've used devices and software that use a variety of different of methods. None is better or worse than the other. Neither is valid to be used as a standard. I can (and have) adjusted to either with little trouble.

I just refuse to believe that epub's "pages" are better because they've stuck a nostalgic word in front of their arbitrarily determined character count.

Well "Pages" were never standard either, paper back page number is different than hardback page number for the same title etc. The reason pages are better is because it makes sense to people in an emotional way. Locations don't.