Page numbers in ePub, converted from htm

[hollowayhouse]

Hello,

I can't say I've ever really paid that much attention to the page numbers in the upper left corner of the reader window, but a client for whom I format just wrote and told me the numbers are all over the place, and show her book being much longer than it is.

Can someone tell me how the system works for generating those page numbers. I've read some threads about images and PDF conversions, etc, but this is straight novel text, with a book cover. One of the books has a map on one of the opening pages, but that's it.

The mobi file shows she has 780 pages, the epub shows 1113. Then when I tried flattening the structure of the epub file, it went to 1089. The title page after the cover shows as pg 2, then the Prologue jumps to pg 18, then the map (pg 35), then chapter 1 starts on page 51 (when it is really page four).

Any help and/or explanations would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I just downloaded the Nook for Android reader on my phone, and it has the page numbers in an x of xx format upper right. It, too, shows crazy jumps. Chapter one starts on page 71.

[hollowayhouse]

Originally Posted by hollowayhouse

Hello,

I can't say I've ever really paid that much attention to the page numbers in the upper left corner of the reader window, but a client for whom I format just wrote and told me the numbers are all over the place, and show her book being much longer than it is.

Can someone tell me how the system works for generating those page numbers. I've read some threads about images and PDF conversions, etc, but this is straight novel text, with a book cover. One of the books has a map on one of the opening pages, but that's it.

The mobi file shows she has 780 pages, the epub shows 1113. Then when I tried flattening the structure of the epub file, it went to 1089. The title page after the cover shows as pg 2, then the Prologue jumps to pg 18, then the map (pg 35), then chapter 1 starts on page 51 (when it is really page four).

Any help and/or explanations would be appreciated.

UPDATE: I just downloaded the Nook for Android reader on my phone, and it has the page numbers in an x of xx format upper right. It, too, shows crazy jumps. Chapter one starts on page 71.

Am I crazy to reply to my own post, simply to get it some more visibility? There have been over 60 views of my post, but no one seems able to answer my questions. I am kind of in a bind to get this figured out. Any insights would be appreciated.

[davidfor]

Just to check, the page number you are interested in firstly are those shown in the calibre viewer? If so, they are simply calculated on the number of characters. If I remember, it is 1000 or 1024 characters per page. So, depending on how big the viewer window is, you might have more or less than one page displayed. Hence scrolling a screens worth will unlikely to scroll exactly one page number.

There are some other things going on depending on the structure of the epub. The epub contains multiple files. If one of the, such as the title page or cover, contains less than 1000 characters, the contents of that file will probably be counted as one page. If you want to have a look yourself, you can use "Tweak epub" option to explode the contents or Sigil to edit them in a more friendly way. Or if the ebook is freely (and legally) available somewhere, post a link so someone can have a look.

The above is for epubs. I don't know enough about mobi or the Nook for Android app to comment on what is happening with those.

[hollowayhouse]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Just to check, the page number you are interested in firstly are those shown in the calibre viewer? If so, they are simply calculated on the number of characters. If I remember, it is 1000 or 1024 characters per page. So, depending on how big the viewer window is, you might have more or less than one page displayed. Hence scrolling a screens worth will unlikely to scroll exactly one page number.

There are some other things going on depending on the structure of the epub. The epub contains multiple files. If one of the, such as the title page or cover, contains less than 1000 characters, the contents of that file will probably be counted as one page. If you want to have a look yourself, you can use "Tweak epub" option to explode the contents or Sigil to edit them in a more friendly way. Or if the ebook is freely (and legally) available somewhere, post a link so someone can have a look.

The above is for epubs. I don't know enough about mobi or the Nook for Android app to comment on what is happening with those.

Thanks, DavidFor!
I knew the Calibre view was more like Kindle's "location", not really page numbers, but they jump really randomly. I'm going to release my mind, and my need to feel control over that! LOL. I appreciate that you took time to reply. As an aside, when I opened it in Nook on my MacBook Pro (which was no easy task... what a glitchy program! Yikes), the numbers were all but perfect, except for where it had to try to figure out the map I inserted. There it took a bigger jump, but the text area was correctly displayed.

Again, thanks.

[kiwidude]

@hollowayhouse - there's a number of discussions on page counts around these forums, but what it comes down to is the simple fact that there is no such thing as a "page" in an electronic reflowing book format like epub. Adobe have a definition of a "page" being 1024 characters, which is what calibre's reader uses. Other devices and software each can have their own definitions. Since everyone can use different fonts and font sizes there is no one number common across all of them which says how big a page can be. And Adobe's definition is just as "meaningless" a number as Kindle's "location" feature to the average user.

So basically - I would suggest you tell your client they need to get over it .

[nyITguy]

Originally Posted by kiwidude

And Adobe's definition is just as "meaningless" a number as Kindle's "location" feature to the average user.

So basically - I would suggest you tell your client they need to get over it .

This comment isn't exactly related to the OP's question, but it does relate to kiwidude's comment. One of my company's customers (we're a scholarly publisher) rather angrily noted that the Kindle version of one of our books didn't include the original page numbers (from the PDF from which the book was converted), and that "all" of his other scholarly books do show this information--which is only visible with 3G Kindle devices. Although it was tempting to simply write off this irate intellectual's patronizing comments, the fact is that consumers of scholarly/academic publications often need to create citations to reference their source material, and in the context of an ebook this is impossible if the information isn't provided to them.

[kiwidude]

@nyITguy - the difference in that case is that you are talking about a PDF page number. That is a completely and totally different thing to the ADE page number which is the one that has very little meaning.