Quote:
Originally Posted by pilotbob
Actually, if you allow for 9 characters not just limiting it to 0-9 you have 0-9 and A-Z maybe skipping O and I to not confused them with 0 (Zero) and 1 (One). This would give you a heck of alot more than 1billion codes. So, you could even make it a bit shorter and still allow for alot of books. (Perhaps someone that is better at math than I am can figure how many that would allow. I always forget how to figure this out.)
But, I like your idea... the root of the ISBN would be for the content then a few extra digits for language, format, publisher, whatever.
Then search engines could easily adjust to show you not just the format you searched for if you look for the full ISBN but for all the formats of the same book.
BOb
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I thinking of strictly numbers when I mentioned nine digits. A problem I've run into when mixing letters and numbers is that you'd have to eliminate certain letters (in addition to O and I, you'd also have to eliminate C, D, L (if lowercase is included), and Q) to avoid potential visual confusion. A numbers-only code also eliminates potential language difference confusion (to use a chess example, in algebraic chess notation the bishop can be written as "B" or "L" depending on the language).
As far as including publisher information in the code, I think this code should be based strictly on the book itself. Anything independent of the text of the book itself (like the publisher) should not be included in the code.
As an example, with a book in the public domain many publishers from around the world can publish the same book. Each published book would have a different ISBN, but the ID Number for each released version of that book would be the same. With a computer search, it would be easy to find all versions of the same book. Additional parts of the code would allow you to pinpoint the specific version of the book you want (such as "I want an unabridged paperback version of The Wizard Of Oz in French." or "I want an abridged AportisDoc version of Silas Marner in American English.").