An eReader idea

[apastuszak]

I've been having discussions with people that use rule books for role playing games such as Dungeons & Dragons and other reference books about the appeal of physical books over their ebook counterparts. One of the more common complaints I hear from people is, when it comes to reference books, you can grab them and quickly skim through the book and find what you're looking for from muscle memory in your fingers, or just brain memory of knowing how far to skim in a book.

I thought there might be a way to recreate this experience in an eReader by having a bar down the side of the unit that you could slide your fingers down to "flip through" a book.

Is this being implemented is any reading software for tablets by any chance?

[meeera]

Yes, GoodReader (PDF reader for iOS) does this.

[Turtle91]

We have the same complaint when reading technical manuals (not just Pathfinder). It's a little bit of a paradigm shift, but using the electronic TOC, or bookmarks is really fast too. It just takes someone who is as used to using the electronic version as the paper copy.

[Cinisajoy]

Some books are just better as paper. A car owner's manual comes to mind.

[HomeInMyShoes]

There are just so many personal ways we can mark and use a paper book. Electronic ones just haven't gotten there. If the chapters are web pages there is a lot more we can do with custom hyperlinks and such. People can create their own html pages to link whereever, they can tag groups of links and all of that, but that interface isn't there.

So we buy the paper, we mark related topics with post-it flags of the same colour. We write mnemonics on the flags and we dog-ear other pages. It is just so personal and evolving as we use the book. Reference material is this way and the standard old ePub is a terrible way to subdivide topics within reference material.

It is getting better and eVersions of texts and reference material could be very useful and faster and more complete. I can now have many books on file, but the holder of that information and for some reason scanning still seems easier in paper. But I've got decades of paper experience and only a few years with the electronic formats.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by meeera

Yes, GoodReader (PDF reader for iOS) does this.

I just tried this in GoodReader, and it is indeed there. The Kindle has it too. It's a slider across the bottom of the screen.

I was thinking of a slider across the right edge of the device to simulate actually flipping through a book.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by Turtle91

We have the same complaint when reading technical manuals (not just Pathfinder). It's a little bit of a paradigm shift, but using the electronic TOC, or bookmarks is really fast too. It just takes someone who is as used to using the electronic version as the paper copy.

The thing I like most about electronic versions is search. That, to me, trumps any muscle memory your fingers may have.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

There are just so many personal ways we can mark and use a paper book. Electronic ones just haven't gotten there. If the chapters are web pages there is a lot more we can do with custom hyperlinks and such. People can create their own html pages to link whereever, they can tag groups of links and all of that, but that interface isn't there.

So we buy the paper, we mark related topics with post-it flags of the same colour. We write mnemonics on the flags and we dog-ear other pages. It is just so personal and evolving as we use the book. Reference material is this way and the standard old ePub is a terrible way to subdivide topics within reference material.

It is getting better and eVersions of texts and reference material could be very useful and faster and more complete. I can now have many books on file, but the holder of that information and for some reason scanning still seems easier in paper. But I've got decades of paper experience and only a few years with the electronic formats.

A good PDF reader will let you "dogear" pages by using bookmarks, allow annotations and hilighting. Once you really learn how to use a good ereading app and make the switch, then I think you'd become quite comfortable reading an ebook.

[HomeInMyShoes]

I know you can mark things. I'm talking about the marking of multiple books where you can visually see information instantly based on colour and mnemonics. I need a bookmark aggregator so I can visually see what is related to TOPIC X without having to open every book to look through the bookmarks I set. Or open each and ctrl-f in each one.

I do hate PDF. It scales terribly across formats, is a storage hog and is really quite useless for textual information. For printing and layout it is great though, but the vast majority of information in texts is plain text and things should be way easier than they are.

Agreed on the search though. Searching is awesome. Aggregating the search across multiple books is not the best yet unless you're using enterprise tools and generating indexes at home which is beyond most people. But that is where the real power will lie.

[crankypants]

What about having squares along the side or bottom of the screen which are bookmarks made of text or icons? You click/touch the square and go right to the page you want. Book sliders are notoriously inaccurate especially for people with larger fingers.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by crankypants

What about having squares along the side or bottom of the screen which are bookmarks made of text or icons? You click/touch the square and go right to the page you want. Book sliders are notoriously inaccurate especially for people with larger fingers.

That would work.

[apastuszak]

Originally Posted by HomeInMyShoes

I know you can mark things. I'm talking about the marking of multiple books where you can visually see information instantly based on colour and mnemonics. I need a bookmark aggregator so I can visually see what is related to TOPIC X without having to open every book to look through the bookmarks I set. Or open each and ctrl-f in each one.

I do hate PDF. It scales terribly across formats, is a storage hog and is really quite useless for textual information. For printing and layout it is great though, but the vast majority of information in texts is plain text and things should be way easier than they are.

Agreed on the search though. Searching is awesome. Aggregating the search across multiple books is not the best yet unless you're using enterprise tools and generating indexes at home which is beyond most people. But that is where the real power will lie.

I prefer ePub or even HTML to PDF, but people that play RPGs love their wonderfully illustrated rule books.

The only category that I deal with is stamp catalogs. Amos Media is the big US publisher. They make the Scott Standard Postage Stamp Catalog. Their current iteration is a custom app that feeds you a JPG of each page. These kind of collecting reference books really need to databases in this day and age instead of printed catalogs.