[Faterson]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

"logical and natural" is your subjective opinion.

Of course. And your differing opinions are likewise subjective opinions. What else is new? That's what discussion boards are for – they allow us to exchange our subjective views.

Originally Posted by cedhax

since that's not the case now with Marvin 3's newly invented page numbering scheme, I just want to know how images are counted as "pages" as conceived by kguil.

I get you, but if you permit me to give an answer as well, my answer to your question would be: "Does it matter at all?" The current "pages" in Marvin are pure fiction – the numbers literally mean nothing, and it infuriates me every day to see them in the footer. So, does it really matter how images are treated in this purely arbitrary scheme? I mean, when the page-counts are literally meaningless, what difference would it make if an image is counted as 0.25 of a (fake) "page", or 0.5 of a (fake) "page", or 2.0 of a "fake" page?

Originally Posted by JKenP

The only thing that seems a solution here for those with their shorts in a knot is to quit ebooks and buy paper books whose numbering is in stone/ink.

Those would be my opponents in this and the other thread. Because that is exactly my line of reasoning: e-book pages can never be set in stone/ink, but Marvin 3 is attempting to do that, absurdly pretending that the same e-book has the same number of pages on both a 4-inch iPhone and a 13-inch iPad. So, it's really Marvin 3 who has its "shorts in a knot".

Originally Posted by Turtle91

You'll never win an argument against someone who ignores everyone else's opinion as "stupid" or "nonsensical" and imposes their own opinion as the only logical way of doing something.....

That's right. Were you describing anyone in particular? You certainly couldn't have meant me because I keep tirelessly repeating that I do respect all differing views (I said so explicitly to Jon earlier in this thread); all I'm asking for is for Marvin to give us an alternative way to display page-counts – different from the current way which I do consider absurd and untenable from the point of view of consistency in software.

Marvin 3 currently insists that a page in a chapter is a screen flip (my preference), but at the same time, Marvin 3 insists that a page in a book is something entirely different – an arbitrarily invented (and ill-chosen), abstract concept of "250 words". How can Marvin 3 call two entirely different concepts the same thing – "page", even simultaneously inside the same footer? Such inconsistency should be anathema to any serious-minded software developer. I know that Kris is a seriously-minded software developer, and therefore I very much hope he will rectify the current page-count situation in Marvin 3. If Kris simply gives those of us who prefer it, the option to count pages in books in the same way that Marvin has always counted and still counts pages in chapters (screen flip = page turn), then I'll be perfectly satisfied. The current abstract "page" scheme can be kept (even as default) for those Marvin users who prefer it, and yet another "page" scheme, ADE, might be added as an option to oblige users like Jon.

The esteemed MobileRead poster Tex2002ans sent me a private message on the current subject, alerting me to an important MobileRead thread on cross-referencing in e-books, and I'm quoting a part of my reply to Tex here below.

*****

That post #129 is another classic from you. My position is – exactly for the reasons you detailed in that post – that trying to conceive "pages" in e-books as any sort of cross-referencing platform is pure illusion: it's chasing a chimera, and it will never work. That's why I argue that Marvin should simply employ "pages" in the common-sense manner: a screen flip = a page turn, and that's it. No attempt whatsoever at pretending that those page counts have any relation whatsoever to anywhere other than your current reading device and your current formatting settings. Unfortunately, it's pretty difficult to communicate it in these forums; but I do hope that Kris as the Marvin developer will recognize that we should at least get this option in Marvin. For folks who believe that "pages" in e-books are something other than simple screen flips on your current reading device... well, let them cling to that illusion. I don't really care, as long as Marvin also gives us that other, "natural/realistic" page-count option.

As to my own preference for cross-referencing in e-books, it would be "percentage inside e-book", using the 4-digit format: 72.54%, whereby the percentage is determined by word count (say, 5,000th word in a 10,000-word book would be 50.00% inside the book). It's not precise either, and there are potential pitfalls you detail in your post #129, but it seems to me to be the best option from among all available. But let's just forget about pages for cross-referencing purposes in e-books, please. As I believe you indicated in your post #129, e-books resemble webpages a lot more than they do physical books, and we have no page numbering for webpages, right? And, of course an e-book is basically built out of HTML code just like a webpage is. E-books and webpages are "brothers and sisters", so to say, whereas printed books are just distant relatives. What works for distant relatives (cross-referencing them via page numbers) will never work for webpages or e-books, because the latter are (thank heavens!) fully fluid formats.

Word count is an excellent option, in my opinion, to determine the "percentage read"/location inside an e-book; but word count is a terrible choice even for abstract page counts, which is why I believe ADE is right in defining a page (the "abstract/fake" page) as 1024 characters, but Marvin is completely wrong in defining it as 250 words. As I mentioned elsewhere, German (for example) has much longer words than (say) English – so does this mean now that all German e-books will have fewer pages, on average, in Marvin, than English e-books? That's just unacceptable to me, even for an abstract/arbitrary "page" count. If some of the Marvin users like this particular "page"-count illusion, OK – let them use it in Marvin (by default, for all I care). But please don't enforce this as the only page-count option for all Marvin users.