Quote:
Originally Posted by odedta
In MSWord when you look at a table of contents you see the page number of a subject matter and you can use the "Go to" function. In eBook you can see the page number (updated as your font does) and scroll with the bar below to that particular page.
We can also ask why is this option available even in MSWord, but I don't really care about the answer, if it's possible in any document over PC or Mac I expect it to be available in eBooks as well. True, is nothing BUT luxury function.
That being said, I am not asking this for my own amusement, I am asking this because I am making an eBook for someone and they asked if that is possible. I couldn't care less if that function is there or not but when someone else is asking and you're working for them then... you post here I guess  |
It's available in Word because Word is creating documents
for print. Nor does it automagically update without any input from the user. If you create a linked TOC (or a page-numbered, active TOC) in Word, (with the dot-leaders, let's say, just for fun), and you update the content, you have to manually "tell" the Table of Contents to update, because the TOC markers, in the Word file, have moved.
What you're talking about doing--I mean, think about it--is making something like this work across myriad reading devices, all with different basic operating systems (Droid, Mac, PC, whatever), with different basic e-reading software (ranging from Marvin to ADE to ADE-based to iBooks), some of which have javascript, most of which don't, and let's not forget Amazon, which only has JSON. You want to do this on the fly for devices which have anywhere from 5-10 fonts to choose from, not to mention what happens when a book has a font already embedded in it for the base font, and up to 8 different (no, now, 10 different) font sizes to choose from. I don't actually know how many possible page numbers that results in, but...as someone else here asked, what's the POINT?
Given that on any given reading device, you can click "go to" the TOC, and then simply click the relevant item on the TOC you want to go to, why on earth do you even want the page numbers? What is their actual functionality? Are you seriously saying that if you saw a Word-like TOC, saying that chapter 7 started on "page 142," you'd SCROLL to page 142, instead of clicking "chapter 7" and jumping there, via a regular link?
Sorry, but I absolutely don't understand this. Even in Word, I never "scroll" to the page numbers (or in ePDF's); I use the links to rapidly go to where I want. Why would anyone scroll?
I'm obviously missing something here. What is it?
Hitch