[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by AIDM2

Can you guys give me an idea how exactly this data appears?

I assume it looks something along these lines in ADE:

http://beranger.org/2013/05/13/page-...omplex-than-i/

(I thought I had a few books with a page-map.xml included, now of course I can't find them).

Originally Posted by AIDM2

Because I'm tempted to think that the most compatible option (apparent to readers) would be to simply leave the page numbers that are there from the scan inside the text.

I agree completely with eschwartz. Do not do this. I have seen a few books that do this, and they look BAD (didn't the early Project Gutenberg books have this?). It definitely jars you out of the reading experience, because it is SMACK DAB in the middle of text (unlike in a physical book, where page numbers are shoved out of the way in the corners).

• What happens when a blockquote/paragraph splits across pages?
• How do you deal with things like Footnotes?? Are you going to add footnotes at the bottom of each "page"??
• How about footnotes that overflow to the next page? Are you going to split those into pieces?

Page numbers are used in physical books because (well, there are actual pages), and it is impossible to SEARCH.

In a digital version, it is easy to locate exactly where the author said something. (Also a reason why Indexes don't make too much sense in an ebook either).

Originally Posted by eschwartz

If the book has multiple print editions, like the public-domain stuff that Tex2002ans does (right?) then there really is no way to match multiple print editions. (Maybe that's why you dislike them so much?)

Nearly everything I work on is public domain and/or CC3.0. We deal in non-fiction economics/history books. Tons of people have referenced our stuff with/without page numbers.

Multiple editions of a book doesn't help, although as Jellby stated, that is a downfall of referencing physical books as well.

Also, what happens if I release a digital PDF in multiple formats (one for iPads, one for cell phones, one for PC reading, one for Kindle Fires, etc. etc.)? The page numbers there will also get all messed up, even if it is the same exact book.

And perhaps it is just because I love ebooks and despise physical books now.... page numbers just make me foam at the mouth! They are a relic of the physical age and must be destroyed!!!

Originally Posted by AIDM2

Sharing references with others? Being able to just hop on a forum and say "on page 264..."

Here are a few articles on ebook citation:

https://chronicle.com/article/E-Book...s-Make/126246/
http://askus.library.wwu.edu/a.php?qid=116953
http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/20...an-e-book.html
http://www.noodletools.com/helpdesk/...article&id=206

What happens currently when you want to reference a website? You don't say:

"On page 15 of "Sample Article" by John Smith, he says: [...]".

You just copy/paste out of the article, and point a link to the article/Archive.org/B&N/Author's Site/forum topic and away you go.

For informal stuff like forums? There is just zero need to reference page numbers. Book + Chapter + (paragraph if you want to get in depth) should be more than enough accuracy.

Whenever I personally debate, I just copy/paste entire paragraphs right out of the EPUB (and reference the chapter/subchapter it was located in). No need for page numbers. Then I link directly to the PDF/EPUB (in our case, all books are available on the site for free in both versions).

If you wanted to be formal (as in, writing a dissertation, writing a report for school), then perhaps you MAY want to get the physical page number equivalent. Although as ebooks get more and more popular, the referencing rules are going to change on how to deal with digital books... I assume it will become more accepted to toss pages out in formal/academic literature as well.

Side Note: There was this article posted, "Why E-books Are Banned in My Digital Journalism Class" by Meredith Broussard:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/1...ooks-heres-why

On page 15 , she says:

Let’s say that you were reading a book for class, and you remember seeing something important in a paragraph that you sort of remember was on a page that also had a picture of a fish. You flip through the book, and you see the page, but it’s not a picture of a fish, it’s a picture of a whale. But you found the passage, and you read it again, and you remember it this time. [...]

This is actually why I hold ebooks as vastly superior. Too many times I read a book, and had to write an essay, and I recall "I remember it being near her baking a cake", and it is impossible to find "cake", or that section ever again. With an ebook, I can just search for every single reference to the word "cake", in about one second. Then I can COPY/PASTE (not have to retype out of the physical book word-for-word) and get on with my life.

Other Side Note: I actually found THREE WORDS as enough for me to find any position in a book. When I write errors down on a piece of paper next to my bed, I only mark down the three words before/after the mistake. I can easily find that location later through search.