MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Page numbers in ebooks for scholarly research?

jbenny · 11-06-2007, 02:32 PM

Something that Panurge brought up in another thread needs further discussion. It was getting lost in the other thread, so i am copying the relevent parts here, in a new thread (see below).

Although the average ebook reader may not care about Panurge's question, remember that ebooks aren't just for entertainment. As more of the world's libraries become digitized, ebooks will be used by professionals, as well as casual readers. In fact, the digitized version will make it easier for everyone to access books that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain.

If you have a suggestion on how to handle this issue in an ebook, without also intruding too much on the casual reader, please speak up. Also, please let's not wander off into left field about non-relevent topics (yes bowerbird, I mean you). This discussion is about using currently popular ebook formats, not your zml. I would appreciate it if you would limit your suggestions appropriately.

My responses to Panurge were focused on XHTML as it is used in epub, but if you have a suggestion on how to do things in Mobipocket, LIT, PDF, LRF, or other popular ebook formats, suggest away.

-------------------

Panurge:

> 14. don't put pagenumbers inside the text/paragraphs.

For the casual reader, this may not be an important point, but for someone who publishes scholarly texts, which require documentation, it is. The page numbers of the original text do matter, as does the exact text that lies between them.

[snip]

But what really matters for scholars who have to show in their footnotes where to locate the authority for the text they cite, a lack of representation of the pagination of the original renders the e-text useless.

[snip]

At the same time, we who are scholars have to decide whether or not the original print text-source is what we're going to refer to or the e-text facsimile. If the latter, do we regard it as a new edition or as a faithful representation of the print copy? If we don't account for these needs in our re-encoding now, we'll simply have to redo the e-texts in the future if we expect electronic texts to gain much of a oothold in the world of scholarship and education.
-------------------

jbenny:

You bring up a very valid point that most of us don't think of (me included). Can you suggest a way to handle this without having the page numbers in-line with the text? Most of us would find the visible page numbers too obnoxious.

[snip]

For XHTML markup, one thing that comes to mind (just off the top of my head) would be to enclose all the text that makes up an original page with a surrounding tag that uses the "id" attribute to hold the page number.
-------------------

jbenny:

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...1&d=1194151963

The content is totally bogus. I just made it up for this test. I used a <span> tag to mark the beginning few words of each page. Since a physical page is likely to fall mid-sentence, you can't use a block-level tag like <div>. Well, you could, but that would also break a sentence in the ebook, which is not what you want.

[snip]

This is far from an ideal method, but it was the first thing that I tried. Perhaps someone has a better suggestion? How to delimit the page breaks for those who need them, while not being in-your-face for the average ebook reader? In a web browser, some javascript could make this a lot easier. However, I don't know of any ebook readers that do javascript (not counting PDAs).
-------------------

Panurge:

Some such solution might satisfy everyone. Current scholarly journal databases such as Project Muse give the page numbers in square brackets within the text--an "ugly" solution, I suppose, but a simple one. JSTOR, the dominant archive of scholarly journals takes a different tack. It uses searchable PDF files and presents a scanned graphic representation of the original journal page, so the pagination problem is not an issue. However, the downloaded PDFs don't look all that great on the Sony Reader, though they are usable.
-------------------

jbenny:

Although neither is ideal, both methods could easily be done in an epub ebook. The first would be very simple, but "ugly" as you say. Including a scanned image of each page (PDF, PNG, JPG, etc.) that is linked from the XHTML text is also possible. This would of course make the epub much larger and more work to construct.

I haven't had the time to think about other ways to do this, but there is probably a good way to do this strictly in XHTML, without having to include scans or put visible page numbers in the text. Perhaps someone else can suggest something?

11-06-2007, 02:32 PM	#1
jbenny Addict Posts: 323 Karma: 358 Join Date: May 2007 Device: Tablet PC and Nokia N800	Page numbers in ebooks for scholarly research? Something that Panurge brought up in another thread needs further discussion. It was getting lost in the other thread, so i am copying the relevent parts here, in a new thread (see below). Although the average ebook reader may not care about Panurge's question, remember that ebooks aren't just for entertainment. As more of the world's libraries become digitized, ebooks will be used by professionals, as well as casual readers. In fact, the digitized version will make it easier for everyone to access books that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to obtain. If you have a suggestion on how to handle this issue in an ebook, without also intruding too much on the casual reader, please speak up. Also, please let's not wander off into left field about non-relevent topics (yes bowerbird, I mean you). This discussion is about using currently popular ebook formats, not your zml. I would appreciate it if you would limit your suggestions appropriately. My responses to Panurge were focused on XHTML as it is used in epub, but if you have a suggestion on how to do things in Mobipocket, LIT, PDF, LRF, or other popular ebook formats, suggest away. ------------------- Panurge: > 14. don't put pagenumbers inside the text/paragraphs. For the casual reader, this may not be an important point, but for someone who publishes scholarly texts, which require documentation, it is. The page numbers of the original text do matter, as does the exact text that lies between them. [snip] But what really matters for scholars who have to show in their footnotes where to locate the authority for the text they cite, a lack of representation of the pagination of the original renders the e-text useless. [snip] At the same time, we who are scholars have to decide whether or not the original print text-source is what we're going to refer to or the e-text facsimile. If the latter, do we regard it as a new edition or as a faithful representation of the print copy? If we don't account for these needs in our re-encoding now, we'll simply have to redo the e-texts in the future if we expect electronic texts to gain much of a oothold in the world of scholarship and education. ------------------- jbenny: You bring up a very valid point that most of us don't think of (me included). Can you suggest a way to handle this without having the page numbers in-line with the text? Most of us would find the visible page numbers too obnoxious. [snip] For XHTML markup, one thing that comes to mind (just off the top of my head) would be to enclose all the text that makes up an original page with a surrounding tag that uses the "id" attribute to hold the page number. ------------------- jbenny: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/att...1&d=1194151963 The content is totally bogus. I just made it up for this test. I used a <span> tag to mark the beginning few words of each page. Since a physical page is likely to fall mid-sentence, you can't use a block-level tag like <div>. Well, you could, but that would also break a sentence in the ebook, which is not what you want. [snip] This is far from an ideal method, but it was the first thing that I tried. Perhaps someone has a better suggestion? How to delimit the page breaks for those who need them, while not being in-your-face for the average ebook reader? In a web browser, some javascript could make this a lot easier. However, I don't know of any ebook readers that do javascript (not counting PDAs). ------------------- Panurge: Some such solution might satisfy everyone. Current scholarly journal databases such as Project Muse give the page numbers in square brackets within the text--an "ugly" solution, I suppose, but a simple one. JSTOR, the dominant archive of scholarly journals takes a different tack. It uses searchable PDF files and presents a scanned graphic representation of the original journal page, so the pagination problem is not an issue. However, the downloaded PDFs don't look all that great on the Sony Reader, though they are usable. ------------------- jbenny: Although neither is ideal, both methods could easily be done in an epub ebook. The first would be very simple, but "ugly" as you say. Including a scanned image of each page (PDF, PNG, JPG, etc.) that is linked from the XHTML text is also possible. This would of course make the epub much larger and more work to construct. I haven't had the time to think about other ways to do this, but there is probably a good way to do this strictly in XHTML, without having to include scans or put visible page numbers in the text. Perhaps someone else can suggest something? Last edited by jbenny; 11-06-2007 at 02:35 PM.