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natch said:
> if this e-book thing really does take off,
> some way of absolute reckoning within a text that
> isn't dependent on pages is going to have to emerge
> For books where original or scanned files exist,
> page references will continue to work indefinately,
> but they may or may not, depending on the method,
> for things which are never published physically.
we don't need to have a document "published physically"
to paginate it, so you can use pagenumber references.
a digital document _can_ be paginated (a la .pdf)...
indeed, i believe that it's incumbent on a text's author to
create a "canonical paginated version" for referencing...
but before all that, we have to recognize that it is vital
-- actually, _imperative_ -- that we have an "official"
version of every document, one located in cyberspace
from now until eternity (yeah, i know it's a long time),
in a form that's _never_ changed. (if you wanna edit it,
then the edited version becomes a _new_ document,
located at its own never-changing place in cyberspace,
and _that_version_ can never ever be edited either...)
if you don't insist on this, there's no way you can build
a system that will never break. it's simply _impossible_.
you can build ones that are robust, to varying degrees,
but you can't know _how_ robust, and some problems
will -- to large and also unknown degrees -- be invisible.
and that's unacceptable to everyone, except big brother.
there are lots of people who'll try to sell you snake-oil
which they purport will "solve" the problem. it won't...
and you would be a fool if you were to believe them...
you absolutely need to build the system on concrete...
with a "canonical version" of each and every document,
which is easily referenced by every person at any time.
also, for "scholarly" stuff, these texts will be embedded
in their own separate infrastructure. thus, for instance,
_every_single_article_ from jama -- the journal of the
american medical association -- will be "put together",
in the _exact_ same way that their bound volumes are
sitting right next to each other in your library stacks...
you will be able to click from the last february article to
the first march article, as if they were a seamless whole.
anyway...
the linebreaks and pagebreaks in each canonical version
will be the "official" ones... that will not mean that you
have to live with them; once you've got the digital text,
you can remix it to your delight. but your remix is not
"official", _only_ the "canonical version" is, so any links
-- obviously -- will be targeted at the canonical version.
(because, really, why would they point anywhere else?)
-bowerbird
p.s. it's very good to re-read ted nelson every so often.
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