News from Bookeen about firmware upgrade

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by astra

For me page numbers are absolutely a must.
Cannot imagine reading a book without it.

Why?

Really. Why?!?

Does not knowing somehow make the story less entertaining? Do the characters become lackluster if you can't tell which page you are on? Does the plot wither due to lack of numbering? Can you quantify the value added to a story by the page numbers? If you can, please post a spreadsheet with the values and formulas.

Derek

[tompe]

Originally Posted by ProfJulie

Some of the books I bought? No, not me. Every book I've bought has worked just fine for me. The only books that did not work were ones I checked out of the library (that did not stop me from reading them), but that's now working beautifully on my Cybook.

Wrong wording. You could buy books that did not work. Trying to open them crashed the Cybook. This was probably the most serious bug we have seen reported here.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

And yet so many people aren't negatively influenced by that. For one thing, if it's a *short* story, there's nothing preventing you from paging through to find out how much farther you have to read - for that story. For another, you're supposed to be concentrating upon enjoying the story, not fretting over how many pages you have left in it.

You are reading a 200 page book and a 2000 page book in different ways with regard to interpreation of what you are reading. I find it very strange that these kind of knowledge does not affect how people read. If a short story is 4 pages or 40 pages will totally decide the strukture of the story and you need to have some hint about the structure to be able to read it properly.

It also seems like people only read for "enjoying the story" which is strange. A book is more than the story.

[JWLaRue]

For me having (or not having) page numbers is not the issue or even important....but knowing how far through the book I am does have an influence on me while reading.

This is not something that is easy to quantify with a "spreadsheet with the values and formulas". Rather I find that there is an emotional reaction to the flow of the story. This is primarily evident when approaching the end of the book where there is an expectation that the author will (or needs to) begin wrapping up various loose ends of the plot. There is a build-up in anticipation that adds to the reading experience.

YMMV, but it does exist for some of us.

As long as I can tell how far into/through the book I am, I don't really care how the information is presented.....page numbers, percentage, slider, etc.

-Jeff

[tompe]

Originally Posted by JWLaRue

As long as I can tell how far into/through the book I am, I don't really care how the information is presented.....page numbers, percentage, slider, etc.

But 900 pages read of a total of 1000 is rather different from 90 pages read of a total of 100 so you need the total number of pages also. But I totally agree that your exectations add to the reading experience in a positive way.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

You are reading a 200 page book and a 2000 page book in different ways with regard to interpreation of what you are reading. I find it very strange that these kind of knowledge does not affect how people read. If a short story is 4 pages or 40 pages will totally decide the strukture of the story and you need to have some hint about the structure to be able to read it properly.

It also seems like people only read for "enjoying the story" which is strange. A book is more than the story.

Hunh?!? Clearly we have discovered your 'true identity'! You, my good sir, are a literary critic for the New York Times!

I think I can speak for many readers here. No, I do NOT determine how to 'appreciate' or 'interpret' a given book based upon its length. I don't go into a store and pick up two new books by a given author and say to myself, "Hey. Book #1 is only 173 pages long so I'll have to interpret, process, understand and enjoy it differently than Book #2 which is 327 pages long!"

Wow. By that I mean, whatinsamhell have you been tok- smoking? And where can I get some?

All sarcasm aside, the value of a story, to me, resides in its entertainment value, not in the physical metrics of the story. IMO, entertainment value is determined by such things as characterization, plot, scenery, dialog, motivation. Yes, proper syntax and grammar have a role, but if I'm analyzing page count, paragraph structure and paper quality, then I've just wasted the entire cost of the book. That would be, IMHO, like determining that John Ringo's latest "Paladin of Shadows" novel isn't any good because the LCD in my Dell Axim put more eyestrain on me than the Cybook's e-ink display.

Derek

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

But 900 pages read of a total of 1000 is rather different from 90 pages read of a total of 100 so you need the total number of pages also. But I totally agree that your exectations add to the reading experience in a positive way.

Says who!?! It's still 90% of the story.

Furthermore, I've read some 100-page novels which had me begging for more and some 1,000-page opuses which left me sickened by the waste of time. And the reverse is true for other stories. But in no case did I view length-qua-length as the determining factor. Rather, it was the storytelling methods used. Filling 100, 200 or more pages with lifeless, unimaginative, repetitious and dense, non-descriptive prose kills a story for me. But those same 100 or more pages packed with vivid descriptions of scenery and character motivation as well as action, thought and dialog can force me into a state where I am less 'reading' the story than I am 'imagining' it-where I literally step into the author's world.

Derek

[tompe]

Originally Posted by delphidb96

Says who!?! It's still 90% of the story.

No, it is not. The story is not mapped linearly to the page number.

But if you have not noticed that stories of different length are usually structured differently then I do not know what to say since I find that so absurd.

[delphidb96]

Originally Posted by tompe

No, it is not. The story is not mapped linearly to the page number.

But if you have not noticed that stories of different length are usually structured differently then I do not know what to say since I find that so absurd.

Oh, I've noticed, when I deign to bother. But that metric isn't even remotely relevant to my enjoyment of a novel. All that is relevant is whether I get absorbed enough to imagine myself in that world.

If the author concentrates upon words or sentence, paragraph and chapter structure which inhibits my ability to 'transcend the page', then I won't bother finishing the story and I won't bother buying another book from the author. Any author that forces me to be more concerned over his technique, his mechanics, his 'Wow! Look at me forcing a new "style"!' is an author who doesn't really write fiction.

Derek

[JWLaRue]

Still seems to me that at least some folks are trying to apply a very measurable set of criteria to this. I do not believe that you can simply say that 90% of a (p)book that is 100 pages in length is different than one that is 1000 pages in length. It's not that easy. It depends on the author's pacing of the story.

By the time I get near the end of a book, that pacing guides my expectation...not the exact page count. That's why for me any of the pages-to-be-read measures works....for me.

-Jeff

[Krystian Galaj]

On the subject of Cybook software being beta when released:

I got my Cybok in November, in first batch. It has the earliest released 1.0 software. I installed two dictionaries on it, and they work fine, finding everything that's in them. It never crashed for me without reason, and I read about a book a day. It crashed a few times when I tried to open PDFs with big images inside, that's all. I never had filesystem corruption either, and I mounted both internal Cybook space and SD card through Cybook on Win XP and Mac. I didn't update to newer firmware as that might make something actually start crashing for me...

So it's not like the "beta" is crashing for everyone - maybe it just seems so because the people who have problems with it post here. And it may be just a small number of people out of those 10 thousand who have problems.

[Utahcowboy]

Wow, I had no idea that other people were having so many issues with their Cybook. I have had mine for about a month now and I have never had the dictionary not work, or the progress bar, or any of the other issues that have been presented in this thread. I think it is something the user is doing and not the machine.

As far as features go, I would like a folder system, a way to manage book marks, and the ability to move up/down and left/right when I am navigating through hot links (such as those found in the bible) and I would like the ability to look up phrases and words in a book for study purposes. Other than that I think the Cybook works just fine.

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Krystian Galaj

So it's not like the "beta" is crashing for everyone - maybe it just seems so because the people who have problems with it post here. And it may be just a small number of people out of those 10 thousand who have problems.

A beta should not crash. Traditionally a beta release is something that has been tested and is near a real release. And I would say that the number of bugs found and the range of the severity was consistent with a typical beta release.

[bob_ninja]

Originally Posted by tompe

i think you are missing the main use of page number. It is to know how long the things is you are reading and knowing how much you have left to read. Reading a short story in a collection it is impossible to know how long the short story is which for me influence the experience very negatively.

Reading in a browser is as bad.

Both text and MobiPocket modes display a progress bar at the bottom that conveys 2 attributes:
- the current page position in the overall text is marked by the solid bar
- the total content length is marked by the empty rectangle which is the full display width

A pBook similarly conveys the current position by a page number and the total length by the final page's number. The *ONLY* difference are units. The progress bar unit is a pixel that represents a certain number of lines of text as opposed to pages. The difference for me is minor.

Now, I select ""Go To..." then " "Page..." and I get the total number of pages, in my case I have 1339. So now I know the empty rectangle represents 1339 pages and my progress bas is around 40% mark, so about page 535.
Well that is good enough for me. I get all the information I could possibly want.

Besides, when I am looking at the page number or progress indicator too much then I know I should discard the book as I don't really like it.

[Ralob]

I think we will all just agree to disagree because after 6 pages, nobody is going to be changing their opinions. Yes, the software is not perfect, ad yes, the software release schedule is not what we had hoped. But these things are out of our hands, so all we can do is sit, wait, and see what the next firmware release will bring before we start revolting. The current software works well enough, but it can be better. And if this firmware is a disappointment, I will definitely be angered enough to support any kind of collective outcry.