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Originally Posted by tompe
Page numbers currently have a lot of uses. One is to be able to pace your reading of the book. Another is to give a sense of progress when reading. And another is to be able to estimate how long time it takes to finish a chapter and so on. It is not important that page number is used for this but something that have the relevant properties as page number have must be used. Number of characters is probably much better than paragraph number for this.
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Number of characters is going to be enormous, and difficult to comprehend. The books I've been working with lately have under 2000 paragraphs, but the number of characters is in the hundreds of thousands. And they're smallish. "Oh, today I read characters 119,567 to 134,438!"
Pacing, marking progress and estimating; none of these are specific to page numbers. Page numbers count pages, which are fluid and non-specific in an ebook. If you read 10 pages on your JetBook, and I read 10 pages on my Kindle DX, how is that in any way useful as an objective count? Unless there is an arbitrary, standard page size, font size, margin settings, etc., that all hardware readers use, regardless of their screen size? Which would be overkill, and unnecessary.
Measuring content vs. time (what all three of your terms represent) is not in any way dependent on page numbers. I use the progress bar on FBReader. I often change the font size, depending on whether I have my glasses, or I'm tired, or whatever. Progress bar doesn't move. Objective, and useful. It even has little lines to represent chapter borders. (If this is what you meant by measuring characters, then I partially agree with you.)
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I am impatiently waiting for the firmware update to the Cybook Gen3 so I get "page" numbers and can start reading on my Cybook again. I totally hate the current lack of "page" numbers and have mostly read paper books lately.
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I don't object to "page numbers" for those who want them; just don't hard-code them into eBooks. If you get used to the conventions of your reader, and it allows you to enjoy and learn and whatever, all good to me.
But using "page numbers" as reference for research or reporting makes no sense. Hard-coding pages into display allows no choice to the person reading them, and is especially annoying in today's world of slapdash ebook production. (Because bad habits in a time of fluidity become ingrained -- see DOS, or the petroleum engine.)
Pages in p-books measure something real. Pages in ebooks do not measure the same thing. At best, they measure "screens". And screens are not useful beyond your immediate experience of them.
A simple, useful, functional scheme for reference would be based on paragraphs, or section/paragraphs. That's how lawyers do it, and for good reason.
m a r