Quote:
Originally Posted by DaleDe
This is not as simple as you say if the book is large and the layout engine is pre-paginating the entire document. It would have to scan the document and find every instance of a footnote and adjust as needed. This could take a long time for a ebook reader with its limited processor to do. People are already complaining about the start up time for a book. Making a pop up footnote in this case makes more sense since it need not be allowed for in the document pagination.
We may need to take a look at the pagination requirement and determine what is really needed. How important is knowing the last page number of a book? How important is knowing the page number of the next chapter in a book? Are these essential features?
Specific to footnotes - Where should footnotes go? end of page, end of chapter, end of book? Is links enough with a return capability?
It is interesting to look at MobiPocket on a PDA. They only provide a percentage of the book progress bar and links to chapter starts. They do not currently paginate the book but instead remember a few pagination points for previous pages so you can back up a little (5 pages I believe). This is because they provide all sorts of font sizes and the user can change them at any time. The ebook standards limit the font choices to 7 sizes so this can help a little and you can likely limit the initial pagination to a subset of those but it is still something to look at.
Dale
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No a pre-paginater goes page by page, so whenever it encounters a footnote, it just needs to check if the footnote goes on the current page, or the next page. Personally, I think hyperlinked footnotes to the end of the file, with support for back in the reader software is the best solution.
I think that knowing how many pages there are in the book is important from the perspective of people migrating from paper books. Also from the perspective of books with hyperlinks in them, which increasingly ebooks will have, full pre-layout is important for rendering speed.