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Indeed your scheme is workable. Indeed manual indicies have existed almost from the time that Gutenburg invented the press. But they too have their limitations, where do you keep the index and how do you access it. For example do you try to memorize it? I would suggest that even with only 66 books of the bible that 66 entry numbers us a fairly good size of entries to memorize and if you wanted to do it by chapter assuming that there is an average of 20 chapters in a book that makes it 1200 entries to memorize. Not me! If you keep it on a piece of paper it sort of violates the concept of the Reader in the first place.
Does it give you quicker access. I think that would be subject to debate. For chapters with page numbers between 1 and 9 you would need two keystrokes for; those on pages 10 to 99, 3 keystrokes; for those on pages 100 to 999, four keystrokes; for those on pages 1000 to 9999, 5 keystrokes - and so on.
Where as in my system there are two methods of navigation. Mehod 1
Menu key - back to current book TOC
Menu key - back to Book menu
Menu key - back to collection
#key to page on which desired book lives
return/enter - to page of collection
key to book
key to TOC
# key to page on which desired chapter lives
return - to page in TOC
key to chapter
A total of 10 key strokes or somewhere between 2 to 2.5 times as many as your scheme. But note that I don't really need to memorize very much to make it work, at most the page number in the collection on which the book I wish to access lives. But? You ask! Don't you need to know page number on which the chapter lives? Not really as it is simply (int.truncate(chap_num)/10). For example chapter 32 would be on 32/10 or 3.2 which becomes simply 3 when we integerize it by truncation.
Also not that I have accepted the penalty of selecting the chapter rather than just the book. This costs me 3 key strokes. So for an apple to apples comparison you would have to estimate how many key strokes it would take you to get from the beginning of your book and the desired chapter. I suspect that in most cases, even if you knew the exact offset to the chapter that it would be more than 3 additional key strokes. It could be as many 4 maybe 5 even you knew, or could reasonably estimate the offset.
Method 2 is a bit more difficult but does have the advantage of combining some steps in two one. Simply holding down the menu key will cycle you back through the various menu levels so that if properly done, and this takes some practice you can combine the first 3 steps into one.
Finally there is the issue of accuracy and convenience. As you have noted your approach must assume that that the format print size must be consistent from use to use. The book clearly must repaginate every time you change font size and hence the entry points change. As for being convenient i guess it is every man to his own poison.
BTW did you ever get the Jerusalem Post profile to work for you?
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