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Originally Posted by Jellby
I'm taking about why I think what they have (or say they have) done is pretty useless except in some very specific cases, and why it shouldn't be endorsed by ebook creators (and, in particular, in ePUB, which the Kindle does not read anyway).
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OK... that's clear enough.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
We probably agree mostly  |
I suspect we do.
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Originally Posted by Jellby
But they are not absolute for the content, which should be what matters. If I want to cite some passage of Huckleberry Finn, saying it's in page 148 is pretty useless; saying it's in page 148 of some particular edition is only useful if you happen to have the same edition.
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But that's always been the case for citations and references. What it does do, though, is enable someone to pinpoint the exact material being cited or referenced.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jellby
For an ebook, having "page 148" match some printed edition is just as useful as having "page 148" anywhere else. If they want to provide a means of having hard references (independent of font size, margins, etc.) in an ebook, that's OK, but I see no point in trying to reproduce a printed edition (unless it's a fac-simile).
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That, I'd agree with. However those who are coming from an academic perspective seem to feel that they need to be able to cite references to printed editions, rather than use some form of reference based on the Kindle format (such as location numbers). I've seen a range of reasons put forward for this:
- that the authorities on how to properly cite material in academic papers (Chicago Manual of Style, APA, ALA, etc) don't provide any rules on acceptable formats for ebook references;
- that a reference to a printed work will still be valid and accessible in 50 years time whereas who knows whether or not Kindles will even still exist then;
- that it's much easier and more acceptable for those who need or wish to check the citations provided in a dissertation, academic paper, etc, to go to the library and access the relevant printed material than to require them to be able to access a specific ebook format, such as Kindle ebooks.
Then, as Adjust mentions, there's the school/college setting where the teacher sets a specific set of pages to be read before the next lesson, or the book club scenario, where people can refer to material according to the page in the (specified) printed version where it can be found.
I don't agree with all of these as "good" reasons for tying an ebook to a specific printed version of a book (and none of these address what one is meant to do if there is no corresponding print version), but I can understand the reasoning behind some of these.