Quote:
Originally Posted by pruss
One reason not to tie things to screen numbers is that paging by screenfuls, rather than more flexible scrolling, is itself a left-over from dead-tree technology. :-)
|
Only in the sense that were equating a screen with a page. Since we're reading screen by screen I think it makes sense to track location by screens. I remember back in the old days reading on a PC with a long text file that you would scroll through rather than page through, but that doesn't suit e-ink (and is also perhaps counter-intuitive simply because we all grew up with paper books with pages).
Quote:
|
A lot of non-fiction books have logical subdivisions worked out by the author. For instance, my book on the Principle of Sufficient Reason is divided into three parts, each of which is divided into several chapters, each of which is divided into several sections, and some of the sections are divided to subsections and subsubsections (e.g., "7.4.2.b"). Logical subdivisions should be preferred to artificial subdivisions.
|
There are two separate needs I think:
1) Keeping track of your position/progress for the 'normal' reader who just wants an idea of their progress through a book (to plan their reading ahead, for example)
2) Referencing a place in a book for scholarly/reference/sharing/book club type reasons.
For (1) I think screen numbers (perhaps with the option of % or something else), which should be the default shown permanently at the bottom of the screen at all times. That should suit most readers while reading.
For (2) there needs to be a universal way of referencing an exact place in a book regardless of the publisher, device, or edition, which is what Kindle's locations and 'real page' numbers are for (though I question their usefulness given that locations aren't used in other e-readers and the real page numbers are bound to a specific edition of the paper book. Other references such as an author's own organisation, should probably be left between the author and the reader, though I don't see any reason that the functionality couldn't be encoded in the books and used as an optional 3rd method for navigation.