[msundman]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Medium is a "specific" font size which the reader labels as "medium". I am sure internally it equates to a specific point size.

Ah, OK, so this is just a communication error. By "arbitrary" I didn't mean it's unknowable or variable, but "whatever someone at sony happened to pick, more or less by random". (And, by the way, I apologize for expressing that in a way that had no good "outs" for you, but you responded gracefully (instead of in anger, like many others would have done) so kudos to you for that.)

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Yes, the total page count is adjusted based on the 3 font sizes available. I also don't see a problem with that.

Oh, I though it wasn't. Someone else said that the page count is fixed, but depending on your setup it sometimes advances 2 page numbers when you turn a page, or it might advance the page number only after turning 2 pages. However, if it indeed always advances one page number for each page you turn no matter what your setup is then I've been misinformed.
Well, either way is inconsistent. You're of course free to not mind having such an inconsistency. (And you're free to hammer your square pegs through any which hole you want.)

Originally Posted by pilotbob

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. I don't see why adjusting the total page count is a problem since the total page count DOES change as the font size changes.

If you pick up a HardCover copy of a book and a softcover property of the same book and a large print version of the same book, I bet you that ALL 3 will have different number of pages and page 150 will have different text in each one. Is this in any way confusing to you?

Yes, it is indeed confusing to me if I switch between the 3 versions, and I thought I already described (or at least hinted at) why. And it's obviously inconsistent.

P-books have this limitation, but e-books don't. In fact, I hate that none of the e-book readers I've tried support overlaps when I "turn the page". My current reader's 150-200 ms page flips makes this less of an issue than would, say, a 2000 ms page flip of a sony reader. But still, why can't they have a user-specifiable number of rows of the next page visible at the bottom, and similarly at the top? Probably precisely because the makers of the software are so used to the limitation of page breaks that the feature just hasn't occurred to them. OTOH, they have seen webpages, which are completely pagesizeless, so they figured you can also have e-books be completely pagesizeless and have the text just scroll across the screen, one pixel/text line at a time (and at this time the observant ones start realizing how illogical it is to be talking about pages when everything's just one, long, scrolling page). That's the other extreme, and kinda inherits the limitations of that too, and I don't quite like that either.

I understand that many people want new stuff to have the same limitations that old stuff had (like how powerpoint moronically copies the worst limitations of physical slides *shudder*); it's familiar, it feels comfortable, and you don't have to adjust your way of thinking in any way. However, it's not sane as such, even though some of its implications might be sane.

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Although I still think the definition of insane isn't: "msundman doesn't agree with it."

Of course it isn't, which is why I wrote the actual reason why it's insane (and even that isn't the definition if the word). I even added the thing about the square peg through the round hole in a try to make it more clear. (Yes, yes, I know they sometimes make round pegs by doing just that, but that'd be out-of-context.)