Pages from paper edition

[g.vadala]

I can not display the Pages from paper edition in Calibre Viewer.
I have an EPUB, and the right <a id="pageXX"/> are in it.
I can see the Pages in other viewers (eg: Moon+Reader in Android), but in Calibre Viewer in Windows 11 64bit I do not see them.
Where is the problem?
Thank you

[kovidgoyal]

You need to turn them on in the viewer preferences under headers and footers make sure pages from paper edition is in some header or footer.

[g.vadala]

Oh, yes, I beg your pardon, I didn't write it: of course, I used the option in header and footer, but ther was no displayed number.
However, it would be better display the number inside text, non as a footer.
If you need it, I can attach the epub to you

[kovidgoyal]

The number is never going to be displayed inside text, I find that utterly horrible. If you have a book for which it doesnt work, then opena bug report and attach the epub.

[wonderose]

In Calibre Viewer, I really like using the "Pages from paper edition" option to display the page numbers of the printed book. However, my experience with it has not been entirely positive. For instance, if I start on page 105 and scroll back to page 102, the page number stubbornly remains at 105, and even if I click into the text, the number does not change. Page 102, therefore, stays page 105.

This, at least, has been my experience with the "Pages from paper edition" option. As I see it, the decision to display the printed book's page numbers only outside the main text comes with significant drawbacks—most notably, a lack of responsiveness and, more importantly, a lack of accuracy.

Of course, it is perfectly fine to have aesthetic considerations. However, in my opinion, the user should ultimately be able to decide how they want to use the software. And in my case, accuracy is key. I need to know precisely when one page ends and another begins for my work. The current implementation is certainly good, but not quite good enough for academic use. The age-old discipline of footnotes demands meticulous precision when it comes to page numbers.

Therefore, my suggestion would be to discreetly offer users the option to display page numbers within the main text as well—an additional, less elegant option. After all, not everyone reads aesthetically; some read in an entirely unaesthetic way, simply for the sake of footnotes.

[DNSB]

And how do you decide which paper edition is the correct one? One of my nephews ran into that issue with a couple of his university textbooks in an electronic editions. It turned out that over the 4 years the two textbooks had been out, there were 3 versions of the pbooks where changes in font and page layout caused changes in the pbook page numbers which were not reflected in the ebooks based on the original printing.

[wonderose]

First of all, I’m extremely grateful that this option—to display the printed book’s page numbers—even exists. A lot had to come together to make this possible: the development of the EPUB3 format, the active participation of publishers, and, finally, the implementation in software like Calibre for Windows.

Your example highlights publishers as the weak link in this chain of three. Ultimately, it is their responsibility to ensure accuracy. If they fail to do so, we either end up with no page numbers at all or, perhaps even worse, incorrect ones that readers mistakenly rely on.

That being said, responsibility also lies with the reader. It’s always a good practice to double-check the bibliographic information to ensure that the digital edition corresponds to the correct printed version.

Personally, I rarely encounter this issue, as my reading list consists mostly of specialized academic literature, where second editions are quite uncommon. In this regard, I find myself on relatively safe ground.

Interestingly, even within this kind of literature, publishers often prefer to release a printed edition alongside an EPUB version, deliberately avoiding the publication of a PDF edition.

[Quoth]

Any ebook format can display the paper book page numbers. It's a publisher decision.

The print edition is usually made from a PDF. A PDF edition is where publishers need fixed layout (which needs a suitable size larger screen), perhaps for a text book or magazine, or can't be bothered going back to the source to do an ebook. You can easily adapt the source file for an ebook to have the extra things for PDF/paper. Turning a PDF into an ebook is nearly impossible, but using the wordprocessor source is easy. Almost all the big publishers do production the wrong way round, proofing on PDF and having that print ready before creating an ebook. They should do the proofing on ebook (epub2 for simplicity as that can be automatic from wordprocessor) and then doing the final PDF for paper print and epub version for publication.

[wonderose]

I completely agree—the main bottleneck here is the publishers, with only a few exceptions.

However, my request is about making the most of what publishers do offer (if they provide it at all) and ensuring that printed page numbers are displayed accurately.

This is also a matter of software implementation. For ePubs to be truly useful in academic contexts, precision is essential. After all, academics don’t just read books—they wrestle with them, dissect them, and footnote them to death. And for that, we need precision, not just polished formatting. So while aesthetics have their place, let’s not forget the poor scholars who just want to cite a page number without having to play detective.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by wonderose

So while aesthetics have their place, let’s not forget the poor scholars who just want to cite a page number without having to play detective.

To do that, the viewer window would need to be sized to show exactly one page and the viewer software have an option or command to snap to the beginning of a page. Or work with PDF, if available.

[wonderose]

I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I believe it can be done without requiring major changes. The natural flow of an ePub can still be maintained, it just wouldn’t look as polished with page numbers integrated into the text. But of course, this would have to remain an optional feature.

As for PDFs, well, in my experience, they are often not available, largely due to the (inexplicable) whims of publishers.

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by wonderose

I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I believe it can be done without requiring major changes. The natural flow of an ePub can still be maintained, it just wouldn’t look as polished with page numbers integrated into the text. But of course, this would have to remain an optional feature.

As for PDFs, well, in my experience, they are often not available, largely due to the (inexplicable) whims of publishers.

Sorry, I missed that you want the page numbers integrated with the text. A script could probably be written to detect page numbers and insert them into the text, but since publishers use so many different schemes for page numbering, it would need an option for a user supplied pattern. That would give you what you want with any ebook reading system.

[wonderose]

Calibre Viewer already provides this functionality, and in principle, it works well. The page numbers of the printed book can be displayed in headers, footers, or along the left or right margins. However, the feature is far from precise and, unfortunately, not very reliable. You never really know when one page ends and the next begins. Additionally, when scrolling through the text, the page numbers remain stubbornly in place rather than updating dynamically.

My impression - confirmed by a post from the creator of Calibre in this very thread - is that this design choice is primarily aesthetic. As he put it: "The number is never going to be displayed inside text, I find that utterly horrible." And yes, I can see the point, it certainly isn’t the most elegant solution to have page numbers suddenly appearing mid-paragraph.

However, my counterargument is simple: it doesn’t have to be mandatory, it could simply be an optional feature. Those who value the seamless flow of text in an ePub wouldn’t even notice it, while others - especially users in academic fields - would greatly benefit.

After all, different users have different needs, expectations, and priorities. A good piece of software should be flexible enough to accommodate these variations. There is no reason why functionality and aesthetics cannot coexist.

Or to put it another way: form follows function.

[j.p.s]

I think that you misunderstand what I wrote.

Any unencrypted EPUB with embedded page number IDs can be modified to place the page number in the body text, perhaps surrounded by '[' and ']' or whatever, adjacent to the ID tag. That would do what you want without having to persuade authors of ebook rendering software to do anything.

You stand a much better chance to get help with that than getting a developer to put non trivial effort into adding an option to uglify.

I am pretty sure there are already threads that discuss details on how to procede in other threads, perhaps in the EPUB, Workshop, or Sigil forums. For all I know, it might be possible to do it with a regular expression in the sigil or calibre editor with no scripting required. (But I don't know.)

[wonderose]

I appreciate your suggestions! Yes, modifying EPUBs manually or using a script is a possibility, but let’s be honest—that’s not the ideal solution. What I’m advocating for is a simple toggle in the settings of an existing, widely used software. A solution that doesn’t require users to dive into regex, Python scripts, or EPUB editing just to access something as fundamental as real page numbers.

I also don’t believe I’m just a lone voice in the wilderness. Many academics and researchers working with EPUBs likely share this frustration. Right now, it feels like standing in front of a grand building with many doors—yet only one is unlocked, and only if I personally jimmy it open each morning with custom scripts and manual work. That’s not the optimal path; that’s the workaround we take when the better option isn’t available.

Wouldn’t it be better if the door were simply unlocked for everyone?