Quote:
Originally Posted by eschwartz
It is nearly as bad with ereaders that do provide location data, e.g. ADE page numbers and Kindle location numbers.
In that case, it is dependent on formatting quirks, and converting the book can result in wildly varying page numbers. I am not sure how ADE calculates the page numbers (they use "1024 unicode characters", but does html formatting count?) but Kindle location numbers use file offsets that include the formatting.
Since real page numbers depend on where you got the original ebook, and the reader, and whether conversions have been done, and other bugbears, the academic world has decided to forgo them entirely (for ebooks) in exchange for more easily trackable methods. 
The exception is for Kindles, which unlike ADE do not lie and tell you false page numbers, but if an APNX exists it will contain page numbers derived for that particular .mobi/.azw3 from a specified print edition, and can thus be quoted (as the various citation guides suggest).
(Yes, I know EPUBs can have page-maps -- but I've never seen one, and how do you tell which page numbers are lies and which ones are base off of page-map?) |
ADE's page numbers are as reliable as anything out there for eBooks. True you can get the page numbers to change my modifying the ePub. But if it's the ePub as it came straight from the publishers, then the page numbers are good enough to use to quote from.
Generally a page-map is made from some print version of the book.