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Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
You're confusing two separate things.
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I'm not. I think we just have different ideas of what's acceptable. I happen to think the shortcut approach is "good enough".
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
1. Progress indication. For this the use of any contents size based measure is acceptable. I actually think using file sizes is not, since that will give the user inconsistent feedback. A file with a lot of markup and little content will have the same number of "pages" as a file with little markup and lots of content. Instead, the correct approach is to use the length of non-markup content, not the file size.
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I recognize this and find it acceptable, but you may be right in that most people would not (which is why I'd love to hear from some other users).
Quote:
Originally Posted by kovidgoyal
2. Referencing: To re-iterate, using paragraph numbers of referencing does not require the pre-parsing of all content in the book. And obviously, you wont use a straight number for the paragraph, instead you'd use a compund number of the form section.paragraph #
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I mentioned such an approach above (twice if you include the indirect reference via the Bible), and I'm still trying to decide if it's acceptable. The first problem I mentioned above: large chapters will be split into multiple sections. I think this will upset most users. Similarly, chapter-less books will have arbitrary section splits. (I'd love to say here that ebook software shouldn't mandate file splits where they don't make sense, but the reality is that there are decently good reasons to do so ... at least with the ePub format.)
Then there's the problem of referencing the section. I'm tempted to say we should simply use the manifest ID, but "fm01.12" is slightly cumbersome.
I could be sold on the idea, but it doesn't seem like enough of a leap over the Digital Editions system to justify throwing out the existing, widespread software. And if we are going to define what a "paragraph" is, then some currently-available content would need to be converted to work with the new system.