Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The two systems serve different purposes, of course. The primary purpose of a location number is to give someone a precise reference within a book. If you refer to text at a particular location, a reader can go to that location, and they will be assured of finding that text on their screen, regardless of their choice of font size.
Page numbers - real or "faked" - do not offer that capability, since a single "page" will generally span several screens-worth of text on the Kindle. If you give someone a page number as a reference, they will very likely not see the text that you're referring to on the screen, but will have to page one or more screens backwards or forwards to find it.
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Allowing people to reference to specific portions of a book is only one purpose of page numbers. Outside of textbooks and manuals and the like, I do not share your view that that is the primary purpose of page numbers. Page numbers also provide a way for readers to gauge their progress through a book, and that is something readers do far more frequently. This is the reason why readers here demand easy access to Calibre/Amazon generated page numbers on ebooks. Locations serve the same purpose, but they're not familiar or intuitive units of measurement, unlike Calibre/Amazon generated page numbers which are close enough to reality to suffice. The readers who want page numbers make their demand in this context. Physical book level accuracy or consistency is not a pre-requisite because they're not making this demand for purposes of referencing to specific pages.