Quote:
Originally Posted by howyoudoin
Chapter markings are useless as a visual gauge when there are a lot of chapters in the book. The markings are spaced so close that the progress indicator just jumps from one marking to the next when the chapter's over instead of making a gradual and visible progress from one marking to the next. I actually find the page numbers even more useful in this context.
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I understand they're useless for you in that situation. But even then, they're not useless to me. The only reason I need to know how long I have until the next chapter/section is in order to decide whether to keep reading or not (looking for a good stopping point). If there's scads of chapter-markers stacked nearly on top of each other, then the chapters are relatively (
relatively) short and there's little question I'll be able to finish the current one in this reading session. If they're spread out even a little bit, then I've already got a frame of reference from the chapters I've already finished (and how long it took me to do so).
The page numbers would be just as useless for me as the visual representation is to you. I don't
know how long it's going to take me to read 40 more "pages" of this book. And even if I did, it's not like I'm going to start a countdown in my head after checking "how many to go." I never did that with physical books.
I'm not trying to be argumentative on purpose, I just don't think there's one system that going to work equally well for everyone. For me, the progress bar and the dots (and my previous experience with how fast that progress bar is currently moving) easily allow me to approximate how thick the "chunk of pages" is that I have left to read (and how long it's going to take me to do it).
*shrugs*