Page Numbers
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
Despite Tex2002ans other comments, I se nothing "distracting" about my page numbers (I agree the gif images were clunky in my 2011 book).
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Anyone 87 who actually reads 88 ebooks finds 89 page 90 numbers 100 in the middle of text 101 distracting.
- Breaks search
- What if I wanted to do a search but the sentence crosses pages?
- Don't work the way you want.
- As Hitch mentioned. Trying to search for "24" will lead you to: "124", "224", "241", [...]. Plus all of the actual TEXT: "24 apples", "240 bananas", "in 1248 BC".
- Break copy/paste
- What happens if a paragraph crosses the page boundary?
- What happens when a single paragraph encompasses multiple pages? (Imagine a large figure that takes up 3/4 of a page + a large paragraph before/during/after it).
- Interfere with Text-to-Speech
And there are already ways to handle Page Numbers in EPUBs (mentioned previously). They are a part of the standards (so you can easily "jump to the correct page"), and they can appear non-intrusively on the device (out of the way in the device's Footer).
Not to mention Accessibility reasons (a screen reader will be able to use the standards-compliant way, not the hodgepodge way a single author decides to code their book).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
[...] and my unorthodox insertion of a paragraph with the page number at or near a page break.
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Just beware if Amazon will crack down on such a poor design. Page Numbers DO NOT belong in the flow of the text, and many readers will return the book as "Defective".
Amazon recalled a book over the Text-to-Speech issues when an author used MINUS SIGNS instead of hyphens. It caused a giant ruckus.
I 102 could see the same hammer be applied to 103 page numbers in text (as Amazon already does when enough 104 people return REALLY crappy OCRed books).
Indexes
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
But it goes precisely to the text with the Einstein marker I embedded in InDesign - just where it should go.
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You would have to show specific code examples. Most Indexes are designed with page### ids and jump to approximate locations.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
Now Hitch is rightly concerned about her "many-to-one problem," but an entry with multiple page numbers works beautifully in my two books, at least on some Kindles, notably the Paperwhite (which has a great back button).
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Key word is SOME. SOME devices/readers
don't have a back button. We have to design the ebooks taking many of the lowest common denominators into account.
In the case of a Footnote in the Text:
Code:
<p>This is some book text.<a href="#fn1" id="ft1">[1]</a></p>
Code at end of Chapter (or in separate Footnotes chapter):
Code:
<p><a href="#ft1" id="fn1">[1]</a> This is a footnote.</p>
The user WITH the back button can either click on the link to jump back OR use their back button.
The user WITHOUT the back button can still click and jump back.
In the case of One-to-One, this is great usability!
With the Index (Many) -> Page Number (One).
Code in Text:
Code:
This is a sentence that goes from page 99<a id="page100"></a> to page 100 where Einstein is mentioned.
And this is a sentence where Nobel is talked about.
Code in Index:
Code:
<p>Einstein, Albert, <a href="../Text/Chap01.xhtml#page100">100</a></p>
[...]
<p>Nobel, Alfred, <a href="../Text/Chap01.xhtml#page100">100</a></p>
You have a few problems (off the top of my head):
- The link is ONLY ONE WAY.
- Users without a back button are screwed.
- MULTIPLE links point to page 100, but there is no good way to go from page 100 BACK to the X amount of Index references (Hitch's Many-to-One Problem).
- See below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
I think a hyperlinked index with page numbers in the text (this isn't a novel or comic book where numbers would be a nuisance) is an excellent thing in digital publishing.
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The problem here is again what Hitch brought up: FONT SIZES (font size can be much larger than in print) and DEVICE SIZES (most ereaders are not as large as pages in print books = less text per screen).
Here is just a quick example I grabbed:
Index: Period of production, 484
Ok, let me bust out my dusty ol' tome and hurt my hands dragging this thing to page 484!
PDF of Page:
Ebook (this is on my phone [much tinier than the physical page] with a slightly larger font size):
I followed the link to "Page 484", but I had to read through to the THIRD SCREEN before I found where he talked about "period of production".
As Hitch mentioned, depending on the variables, it could be ~1-5 Screens away from where I was dropped off!
Sure, SOME of the references might be exactly at the "top of the page", but the experience for a digital reader is very poor.
Side Note: The usability/helpfulness of these types of Linked Indexes in ebooks is debatable. Even many PUBLISHERS think that this is unhelpful, and completely strip the Print Indexes out of their ebooks.
In the "Kindle Page Numbers" topic, I came up with the terms "Format-Specific" + "Format-Neutral". Go read that topic for more details! I think the Indexes would be more useful if they were more Neutral.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
That has now been renamed digital publishing indexing, and she is preparing a report for the next annual meeting of the ASI on indexing a digital publication.
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Great. I hope the material can be released for anyone to read. From what I was able to gather in my previous Indexing research, a lot of those Indexing/Library journals + articles are locked behind prohibitively expensive paywalls.
Fixed Format
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
I should note that Kovid Goyal's Calibre chokes on the EPUB3 FXL exported from InDesign.
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Calibre doesn't read Fixed Layout EPUBs, and most of us are not fans of the absurd format anyway (it is trying to be like PDF, but a thousand times worse!).
There isn't ONE flavor of Fixed Layout... there are TENS, and they all have their own quirks and are COMPLETELY incompatible with each other.
You have to design the HTML/CSS specifically for Store/Device X:
- iBooks
- ipad: This is what InDesign mostly caters towards.
- B&N
- Kobo
- Amazon
Each one has to be hand-designed/tweaked PLUS each individual page needs its own CSS file, and everything has to be pixel-placed.
Also, a simple thing like device size will completely change the design of the "Fixed Format" (let us say your initial book is 7"x10", but you have to squeeze that design onto a small 5" ereader.).
Fixed Format drastically shrinks your sellable market, because the book is only going to be readable on a very tiny subset of devices.
AND Fixed Format books throw out the entire PURPOSE and advantage of ebooks (reflowability, changing fonts, changing colors, reading on all different devices, being able to flip Landscape/Portrait, [...]).
On top of it all, they are a pain in the neck to navigate (as Hitch said, pinching/zooming, panning/scanning).
Hitch covers some of the Fixed Format stuff here:
http://www.booknook.biz/booknook-ser...d-fixed-format
We discussed the Pros/Cons of Fixed Format at length before. Just do a search on MobileRead and you will come across those topics.
PDFs are the better "Fixed Format" experience AND can be read on more infinitely more devices. (Although trying to read a book-sized PDF on a phone, or a PDF on a lower powered ereader... absolute crap.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
It seems clear that InDesign is putting something in their EPUB3 export that conflicts with Kindle's guidelines. My Indian developer claims it is in the CSS.
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InDesign creates an ABSOLUTE FUCKING ABOMINATION of code in their Fixed Format EPUBs. It isn't just the HTML/CSS.
(Forgive the language, but there is just no other words for the crap that comes out of it.)
Here is one sentence out of the latest conversion from InDesign I worked on:
This is what a CLEAN Fixed Layout code would look like (and a properly done Fixed Layout Book [like Hitch's company would design]):
Quote:
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<p class="par4">Fortunately, in recent years, writers and sociologists like Goodman <br/>and Edgar Z. Friedenberg have turned a caustic light on our system of <br/>compulsory schooling; for the first time in many decades, this mischie-<br/>vous system is coming under careful and critical scrutiny.</p>
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This is the same sentence in InDesign's Fixed Format EPUB3:
they wrap a span around EVERY... STINKING... WORD... and absolutely position it with pixels + letter-spacing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
Frankly, all the standard EPUB readers do an excellent job (especially with InDesign index output) so Amazon is now a travesty that would be great to repair if we can find a template for an EPUB FXL sample file that converts both ToC and index with working hyperlinked page numbers.
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There is a reason why companies like Hitch's charge so much for Fixed Layout. Each one pretty much has to be designed over from scratch. And there is so many little quirks and oddities for each device that you have to take into account.
Misc.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bob Doyle
[...] but of course a web page is the equivalent of many print pages, so it's very rough. Maybe I should add sub-page numbers!
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Citing Websites + Digital Books directly is perfectly legitimate/valid.
Leave page numbers in the dust bin of history.
When you properly cite Tex2002ans from MobileRead in your articles... I don't want to see any "As the illustrious Tex2002ans stated on MobileRead
on Page 3 when set to 10 posts per page, in the topic 'Real Page Numbers for Reflowable Kindles' [...]."
Quote:
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Thanks again for your help to textbook authors who want them to be as similar to our print works as possible.
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The ebook should be SIMILAR in spirit... but trying to force the crappy Physical into a Digital experience is the absolutely wrong method.