MobileRead Forums - View Single Post

Faterson · 07-11-2016, 05:21 PM

I strongly disagree with you as well, eschwartz.

Actual screen flips are genuine page numbers in the electronic environment.

That is the basic principle I'm arguing for. Not recognizing that is, to me, a fallacy – succumbing to illusions, and calling those illusions "pages".

I don't get the obsession of you guys for a book to have the same number of pages on as different reading devices as a 4-inch iPhone and a 13-inch iPad. Come on???

How could that ever be? Of course if you have a tiny reading device, a book must have many more pages on it than if you have a large reading device. That's just common sense to me.

What you or Jon are talking about is an admirable concept, perhaps, but they are not pages. No, sir, they are not – only geeks could call a "page" something that does not change at all, or changes by 2, 3, or 4, after you flip to a new screen once while reading a book on your iPad or iPhone.

If you know me, eschwartz, you know that I abhor Apple software. It's just unbearably dumb to me. But here, in this page-count matter, iBooks (of all e-readers!) stands head and shoulders above Marvin. Isn't that embarrassing for Marvin?

iBooks treats page numbering exactly right: the total page numbers reflect the size of your reading device. And another related aspect where iBooks is clearly superior over Marvin, is the Table of Contents: when you open it in iBooks, it shows you also the page number where each chapter in the book begins. So, at a single glance, you can see how many times you need to flip the page (on your current reading device, which is all that counts for non-geeks) to get through a chapter. That clarity is impossible to achieve with ADE's fake pages or with Marvin's current fake pages.

Once again: I have nothing against ADE pages, or page-maps, or Marvin's current arbitrary scheme, etc., if they are merely options for Marvin users. But Marvin should definitely also give us what I would call the most natural, the no. 1 reasonable option: page flips = page counts.

iBooks chose this approach, and it was – for a change – perfectly justified in doing so.

07-11-2016, 05:21 PM	#6
Faterson pokrývač škridiel Posts: 1,525 Karma: 3300000 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: Bratislava, Slovakia Device: 3iPad, SamsungNote & Tabs, 2OnyxBoox, Huawei 8″, PocketBook	I strongly disagree with you as well, eschwartz. Actual screen flips are genuine page numbers in the electronic environment. That is the basic principle I'm arguing for. Not recognizing that is, to me, a fallacy – succumbing to illusions, and calling those illusions "pages". I don't get the obsession of you guys for a book to have the same number of pages on as different reading devices as a 4-inch iPhone and a 13-inch iPad. Come on??? How could that ever be? Of course if you have a tiny reading device, a book must have many more pages on it than if you have a large reading device. That's just common sense to me. What you or Jon are talking about is an admirable concept, perhaps, but they are not pages. No, sir, they are not – only geeks could call a "page" something that does not change at all, or changes by 2, 3, or 4, after you flip to a new screen once while reading a book on your iPad or iPhone. If you know me, eschwartz, you know that I abhor Apple software. It's just unbearably dumb to me. But here, in this page-count matter, iBooks (of all e-readers!) stands head and shoulders above Marvin. Isn't that embarrassing for Marvin? iBooks treats page numbering exactly right: the total page numbers reflect the size of your reading device. And another related aspect where iBooks is clearly superior over Marvin, is the Table of Contents: when you open it in iBooks, it shows you also the page number where each chapter in the book begins. So, at a single glance, you can see how many times you need to flip the page (on your current reading device, which is all that counts for non-geeks) to get through a chapter. That clarity is impossible to achieve with ADE's fake pages or with Marvin's current fake pages. Once again: I have nothing against ADE pages, or page-maps, or Marvin's current arbitrary scheme, etc., if they are merely options for Marvin users. But Marvin should definitely also give us what I would call the most natural, the no. 1 reasonable option: page flips = page counts. iBooks chose this approach, and it was – for a change – perfectly justified in doing so.