Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Personally, I'd have
Cover
Title Page
(Possibly Dedication)
Parts
Everything else
I generally read Mobipocket format eBooks. They have a "Go To" menu that's usually populated with links to Start of Book, Table of Contents, etc. So to navigate in the book, I just bring up that menu and choose.
For example, the book I'm reading now "Morality for Beautiful Girls" has the following items on the "Go To" menu:
First Page
Start Reading
Table of Contents
Last Page
So getting to the Table of Contents takes the same time no matter where it is. So there's no point in having it at the front, although this book does do that.
I have a CyBook, so no touch screen. When reading a book it's quite quick to being up the main menu, select to the Go To menu, and then choose a desination from there.
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The REB1100 has a GoTo menu, also. (Only 7 items, but still useful.) And I usually automatically populate it with a TOC link, First Page link and a Verso link (info about the book.) In addition, I add Next Chapter, Last Chapter and TOC buttons at each chapter heading. So you can just bounce through the book -- but that's for a touch screen of course, or for some other way of selecting links.
Given that you're looking to jump to the TOC, nothing about the structure I've offered would stop you from populating that GoTo menu exactly as you've described, and getting to it immediately. If you don't have a limit on the number of entries, you could include every chapter and other element too (Preface, About the Author, etc.) The difference only comes when you page manually through the book.
There are two things, I think, that your comments (thankfully) suggest to me.
One is that there is a difference between the format for the reader and the purpose of the XHTML specification that I'm trying to work out. Given a comprehensive, rational spec, anyone could transform it easily (ridiculously, scriptably easily) into any form, order or format that works for them and for their hardware. Slap it into Calibre, you've got ePub -- properly separated, etc. rbmake would love this spec, (you might have to use some regex on it for new-pages, but rbmake itself lets you do that) and smack it right into an RB file. I'm sure that the mobipocket converter would recognize it -- might even be able to generate that TOC automatically, but I've no experience with it. I'm certain that someone expert could do it easily.
It's an archiving spec, essentially, although it's readable by anything that reads HTML. It's hardware neutral. It's easily parseable. It's human readable. It is as
simple as possible, without losing information. It accurately represents the structure of a book.
Second, if I do this properly, with meta and structure strictly controlled, CSS can do things like change layout such that you reorder the book (at least I think so; wizards please chime in.) At the very least, the CSS would be able to suppress any undesired pieces of the book, given that they will be properly labeled (ie: div.frontispiece { display: none } ) . Just offer you a custom CSS file -- easy to do -- and every book that you get from this spec will appear as you wish it to.
As a corollary to the above ideas: I like opening books and seeing the stuff before the TOC. Real, physical books I mean. I know that we're not talking about the same thing, and that we're not bound to forms that grow from different media -- but I like the traditions of offering you the
mental framework of reading, the experience of it. I'm not a typography nut, nor do I read every detail of the printing history of a book when I open it. But I think that the stuff that opens a book (aside from the modern addition of advertisements) are a reflection of the wisdom of crowds -- generations of people kept the best practices and added new ones when they thought of them. The structure of a book is integral to the way it works, and it works in more ways than reading the stories, and I'd like to support that if I can.
So this is a long way of saying that we can both have what we want from this; but the archival nature of the spec means (to me) that the structure of books must be reflected in the structure of the spec. Traditionally, Prefaces appear before TOCs -- but TOCs usually make reference to them, which is great in the new world of links.
When I finish this, I'll convert
A Princess of Mars into it; take a look at it (in your browser, even) and I think you'll like the functionality, and hopefully I'll even make a CSS that adds beauty to it. We'll see.
Thanks for provoking me,
m a r