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Originally Posted by issybird
What I don't get, frankly, is the conversation:
"I like page numbers; they provide value to me."
"That's stupid and no, they don't."
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I see that particular part of the conversation more as analogous to:
"I like rotary dials on phones, so smartphone makers should add them."
"You will be better off learning to adapt to the new ways of using a phone."
Quote:
Add to that the strawmen of various paper editions having different page counts (which is irrelevant) and assuming that people want page numbers to reflect page turns (which they don't).
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Not strawmen or irrelevant at all. Many people have said the specific reason page nums are important to them is so that in class rooms, everyone can be told one page number as they are with paper books today. It was simplly countered that this is not valid because even today different editions of paper books frequently make teachers say things like "page 113, or the middle of chapter three, the paragraph beginning 'Bob said to May...'"
As for wanting it to equal page turns, that's the only way that they would be any more effective or less arbitrary than any other location or progress indication, with the one exception of discounting end matter and forwards and stuff, as you say, and that could be accomplished in ways other than misapplying static artifacts from paper books.
So the conversation really boils down to "what value do you get, and can you get the same value without them."
If the answer is nothing more than "I just want them," then, yes, thr comversation on both sides is pointless.