Better without pages

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

Ebooks offer the flexibility to give each reader what he wants whether the author/typographer/publisher likes it or not.

To be fair--many readers have no idea what they'd like, and will try all sorts of weird settings before finding the ones that work best for them. For many people, this involves playing with three or four options, going "wow!" a few times--and then giving up on digital books because they "look weird."

People do have individual needs & preferences, but as the web has discovered, nobody really likes to read red text on a black background with an animated dragon who follows around the mouse. Too many "pretty" or "exotic" features ruin an ebook.

In the mid-80s, lots of people got computers with word processors & printers. And suddenly we saw a horrible range of supposedly business-focused letters in scripty or old english fonts, or multiple colors.

[zerospinboson]

Originally Posted by Jack Tingle

In an ebook, they don't even have to be visible until you ask for them. Don't get trapped into ebook=pbook on screen thinking.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

That wasn't my point. My point was that you'd either have to put them in the text (which would be ugly), or tethered to the text in a way currently not quite possible technically yet. (Also, I'd appreciate it if I wasn't told not to be closed-minded. It comes off as oddly condescending)

[astra]

I will not buy ebook reader that doesn't have page numbers. Currently, Sony is the best reader for me, it's page numbering system makes perfect sence.

[Sweetpea]

For me, a page is a measurement of a certain amount of lines of a certain width on a surface.

Pageless (for me) would mean that either the width or the height of the surface is larger than I can easily oversee. So, if you read a book, while scrolling (instead of "page turning"), I'd say you're reading a pageless text. If you use the "page turning" functions, aka, refreshing the entire surface with new content, you're reading pages.

The problem with the current readers (and I do find all readers have this problem) is that a "page" is either hard-coded (ex: epub or PDF) or calculated (ex: mobi). The first scenario is fine if everybody would read from a screen with exactly the same size, with exactly the same font-size, the second scenario is just never really done right (I even think it's almost impossible to do it correctly). I still prefer the second scenario as it does give me some sort of progress bar. Those page numbers from the ADE implementation never made any sense to me...

For me, the perfect ereading software wouldn't show page numbers, but rather progress in the book. This is independent of font-size or page-size.

[Jack Tingle]

Originally Posted by zerospinboson

That wasn't my point. My point was that you'd either have to put them in the text (which would be ugly), or tethered to the text in a way currently not quite possible yet.

(Also, I'd appreciate it if I wasn't told not to be closed-minded. It comes off as oddly condescending)

It is possible to have invisible section and paragraph numbers today on a variety of devices. Any of them that allow inline annotations or hyperlinks can simply have a note that shows up when you come to it. It's not a common feature, probably because not that many very formal documents are electronic yet, but it's not exactly rare.

Sorry, didn't mean to offend. My point was that ebooks offer a very large amount of potential flexibility not usable in static pages. Not all of it is used yet, and no one device or renderer uses all the possibilities, but it's there for anyone who wants to try.

I'm not particularly against pages, I'm against locking them in as the only view into a document. There's really no need with an ebook.

Regards,
Jack Tingle

[frabjous]

In general, I don't personally mind reading a scrolling display; and I definitely see Elfwreck's point about wanting to place exactly what you're interested in together in one view. (I think about what I do when I read the forums. I don't read one post, then the top of a second, and then scroll to the bottom of the second. I put the entirety of the second in the window before I begin reading.)

I just wish that it didn't mean giving up things like full justification with end-of-line hyphenation, which it usually does (e.g., with Web browsers).

As a university instructor, I'm quite accustomed to referring to page numbers, and as of yet, I haven't seen a good alternative. Sometimes sections and chapters, etc., are enough to refer to, but often books aren't really structured well-enough. (I find this especially true for books that began as transcripts of lectures.) I don't know much about Kindle's "locations", but they sound a little too narrowly individuated.

If I tell my students to "read pages 12-44" now, that's far less of a mouthful than "read locations 1150-1797". And at least some of them will want to read on paper, so they can highlight and scrawl notes. Having all these locations printed on the page would be distracting.

[Juliette]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

For me, the perfect ereading software wouldn't show page numbers, but rather progress in the book. This is independent of font-size or page-size.

Like in the Cybook?

[dmaul1114]

Originally Posted by frabjous

As a university instructor, I'm quite accustomed to referring to page numbers, and as of yet, I haven't seen a good alternative. Sometimes sections and chapters, etc., are enough to refer to, but often books aren't really structured well-enough. (I find this especially true for books that began as transcripts of lectures.) I don't know much about Kindle's "locations", but they sound a little too narrowly individuated.

If I tell my students to "read pages 12-44" now, that's far less of a mouthful than "read locations 1150-1797". And at least some of them will want to read on paper, so they can highlight and scrawl notes. Having all these locations printed on the page would be distracting.

As a professor, I agree whole heartedly with all that.

As well as needing page numbers, or consistent locations etc. for citing page numbers in articles I write, and myself preferring paper for academic books and journal articles so I can highlight and make notes on the document and quickly flip through them when writing up literature reviews.

So the e-reader technology has a long way to go before I'll be willing to switch for my work. Though I was happy to make the switch for my leisure novel reading as any device that displays text well, and easy to hold and read is fine for that.

[jxh11215]

Originally Posted by queentess

Perhaps other ereaders are just that different from the Kindle? I've only ever demoed the Sony, and I don't remember much about it at this point.

On the Kindle, it shows at the bottom of the screen my "Location" in the book, which is almost the equivalent of a page, but it's set so that the Location numbers are the same for all readers, no matter the text size used. So at any given time I can see that I am on Location X of Y and I'm Z% through the book. And since there's no text overlap when I go to the next "page", I do see them as distinct page turns.

So if I'm understanding your argument correctly, then I agree with you completely! I like having my distinct pages, and I like seeing my progress and having clearly defined chunks of text, and I abhor scrolling to read a story. It's one of the primary reasons I don't read long webpages of text. For instance, when free stories are posted online, I rarely read them on my monitor. If it's something I really want to read, I drop it onto my ereader.

I think I agree here. I only have the Kindle as well, and to add to the above, when a book has been formatted correctly you also see small dots on the progress line so you can tell how far you are in a chapter as well as quick-nav to the next chapter.

[Juliette]

Originally Posted by dmaul1114

As a professor, I agree whole heartedly with all that.

As well as needing page numbers, or consistent locations etc. for citing page numbers in articles I write, and myself preferring paper for academic books and journal articles so I can highlight and make notes on the document and quickly flip through them when writing up literature reviews.

So the e-reader technology has a long way to go before I'll be willing to switch for my work. Though I was happy to make the switch for my leisure novel reading as any device that displays text well, and easy to hold and read is fine for that.

The ePub format keeps page numbers- otherwise, I'd never consider buying academical texts in electronic format

[=X=]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

If I were a rich woman, I'd commission a custom ebook reader that has e-ink, scrolling, and variable screen widths. Oh, and it should crop the top & sides off PDFs so they can scroll continuously, so I get the benefit of PDF typography and the scrolling of HTML.

....

soPDF does that so does PDFLRF and PDFRead. (referring to the bold)
=X=

[=X=]

Page numbers where created to allow one to index, or reference a particular section of a book and citing books. For instance table of contents, indexes, and the classic (see page XXX for a chart on this data). Page numbers can also be used to determine how long a book is.

My take is that page numbers are no longer needed. The reason is that software can resolve most of the reasons we use page numbers. With links there is no need to add a page number to ToC or indexes. Just jump straight to the location. Also most software can handle displaying the page number or a progress bar. Some software even measures the word count.

The only use of page numbers that software cannot resolve is when citing a work. But this type of reference only works with pbooks if the book size or font never change. We know that is not the case.

But again there is more hope in SW resolving this issue than even the with pBooks. If folks start refering to sections via paragraphs or word count and software standardizes on a way to calculate them then people can then cite the paragragh/word count

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Juliette

Like in the Cybook?

Don't know, never seen a Cybook. But I do know I like the Mobipocket reader. The page numbers I could live without, but the bar does show my relative progress in the book.

[Juliette]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

Don't know, never seen a Cybook. But I do know I like the Mobipocket reader. The page numbers I could live without, but the bar does show my relative progress in the book.

Exactly like that

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by =X=

The only use of page numbers that software cannot resolve is when citing a work. But this type of reference only works with pbooks if the book size or font never change. We know that is not the case.

But again there is more hope in SW resolving this issue than even the with pBooks. If folks start refering to sections via paragraphs or word count and software standardizes on a way to calculate them then people can then cite the paragragh/word count

That is actually one benefit of the increasing "standarisation" of reading devices on Adobe Digital Editions (ADE). ADE does have consistent page numbering which is independent of font size and device, so if you refer to page 50 of a particular ePub book, everyone using ADE-based software to read that book will have the same page 50.