Page numbers in ebooks for scholarly research?

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

As a practical matter I often find that unambiguous identifiers in the source *text* itself work "well enough". For instance, "the paragraph after figure 3" or the "introductory text of section X".

True, but as Patricia alluded to, the Humanities usually require more precise references, and rarely have images. The method you're describing would be ... problematic when sourcing a quote from say, Great Expectations, for instance.

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The problem with line numbering is that the number of lines depends on screen size/font size with a reflowable format. Paragraph numbers might work though assuming the referenced document semantically identifies paragraphs.

You make an excellent point. Line numbers may continue to be useful for things with short, fixed line lengths, such as poetry, but will probably be less useful for more flexible formats. They might could still work out if they were parsed from a fixed format, and applied where ever they showed up in the reflowed one. They usually only mark every fifth or tenth line, anyway, rather than putting an explicit number on each line. Still it's problematic.

Paragraph numbers would seem to be the better choice for text reference, as paragraph 33 will always be paragraph 33, no matter how many "screens" it takes to get to it or display it. Most of the things that would need to be referenced this way would have identifiable paragraphs.

I suppose that it could be as simple as establishing an e-referencing standard such as formatting the e-text to an established page size, font and margin parameters, i.e. A4, 2.5 cm margins all around, in Arial 10 pt font. Then your references would be to the text in that "standard" formatting.

A cleverly programmed reading software could even internalize that parsing and report the "official" page number of the current page or a selected piece of text upon request. But we're talking not the currently designed hardware here, of course. Well, except the iLiad, it could likely be programmed to do this.

[jbenny]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Page numbers are not enough. You also need more data to use a book in a bibliography or other scholarly reference. Different editions have different numbering and even a hardback vs. paperback have different numbering. Often the scanned book data is not detailed enough to define these differences. This is why, in business, where references are needed the sections and sometimes even the paragraphs are numbered. Page numbers are not really enough.

Dale

I was just responding to Panurge's question about this, which mentioned page numbers. Yes, for others, page numbers would not be fine-grained enough.

I think it is good to get input from people with different needs. This is valuable information for those who may want to try to provide an interim solution, as well as those who may set future standards.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jbenny

Yes, line numbering isn't going to work for ebooks, which are reflowable. Maybe paragraph numbers would be fine-grained enough?

Certainly much better than page numbers. Likely better to include a chapter number and then paragraph number to keep the numbers a bit smaller.

Dale

[jbenny]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I suppose that it could be as simple as establishing an e-referencing standard such as formatting the e-text to an established page size, font and margin parameters, i.e. A4, 2.5 cm margins all around, in Arial 10 pt font. Then your references would be to the text in that "standard" formatting.

But, do we want to be tied to some paper-based standard of reference for ebooks? There should be some standard way of doing this without having to send the human reader off elsewhere to find another copy of the same work. Also, this would entail the creation and maintenance of two different copies, just for one ebook.

[jbenny]

Originally Posted by DaleDe

Certainly much better than page numbers. Likely better to include a chapter number and then paragraph number to keep the numbers a bit smaller.

Dale

Yes, I was thinking of paragraph numbers within chapters or sections. Anything else would be too cumbersome.

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by jbenny

But, do we want to be tied to some paper-based standard of reference for ebooks? There should be some standard way of doing this without having to send the human reader off elsewhere to find another copy of the same work. Also, this would entail the creation and maintenance of two different copies, just for one ebook.

I was thinking of something more along the lines of:

1. copy text into Word (or whatever)
2. set page size as A4
3. set margins as 2.5 cm all around
4. set font as Arial 10 pt
5. find your passage (text search or whatever)
6. take your reference from here

Or even better:

1. select passage with stylus
2. click the "standard reference" button/menu item
3. use the reference the cleverly programmed reading software calculates for you based on the "standard" page size and format

[bowerbird]

natch said:
> if this e-book thing really does take off,
> some way of absolute reckoning within a text that
> isn't dependent on pages is going to have to emerge
> For books where original or scanned files exist,
> page references will continue to work indefinately,
> but they may or may not, depending on the method,
> for things which are never published physically.

we don't need to have a document "published physically"
to paginate it, so you can use pagenumber references.

a digital document _can_ be paginated (a la .pdf)...

indeed, i believe that it's incumbent on a text's author to
create a "canonical paginated version" for referencing...

but before all that, we have to recognize that it is vital
-- actually, _imperative_ -- that we have an "official"
version of every document, one located in cyberspace
from now until eternity (yeah, i know it's a long time),
in a form that's _never_ changed. (if you wanna edit it,
then the edited version becomes a _new_ document,
located at its own never-changing place in cyberspace,
and _that_version_ can never ever be edited either...)

if you don't insist on this, there's no way you can build
a system that will never break. it's simply _impossible_.
you can build ones that are robust, to varying degrees,
but you can't know _how_ robust, and some problems
will -- to large and also unknown degrees -- be invisible.
and that's unacceptable to everyone, except big brother.

there are lots of people who'll try to sell you snake-oil
which they purport will "solve" the problem. it won't...
and you would be a fool if you were to believe them...

you absolutely need to build the system on concrete...
with a "canonical version" of each and every document,
which is easily referenced by every person at any time.

also, for "scholarly" stuff, these texts will be embedded
in their own separate infrastructure. thus, for instance,
_every_single_article_ from jama -- the journal of the
american medical association -- will be "put together",
in the _exact_ same way that their bound volumes are
sitting right next to each other in your library stacks...
you will be able to click from the last february article to
the first march article, as if they were a seamless whole.

anyway...

the linebreaks and pagebreaks in each canonical version
will be the "official" ones... that will not mean that you
have to live with them; once you've got the digital text,
you can remix it to your delight. but your remix is not
"official", _only_ the "canonical version" is, so any links
-- obviously -- will be targeted at the canonical version.
(because, really, why would they point anywhere else?)

-bowerbird

p.s. it's very good to re-read ted nelson every so often.

[jbenny]

Originally Posted by NatCh

I was thinking of something more along the lines of:

1. copy text into Word (or whatever)
2. set page size as A4
3. set margins as 2.5 cm all around
4. set font as Arial 10 pt
5. find your passage (text search or whatever)
6. take your reference from here

Or even better:

1. select passage with stylus
2. click the "standard reference" button/menu item
3. use the reference the cleverly programmed reading software calculates for you based on the "standard" page size and format

Given a choice, I'd much rather use the second method

[NatCh]

@bowerbird: Excellent points, probably some sort of e-Library of Congress is the most likely evolution, I guess.

Originally Posted by jbenny

Given a choice, I'd much rather use the second method

That's most likely because you have something between your ears.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jbenny

Given a choice, I'd much rather use the second method

Actually calculating based on the hardbook is pretty simple to do. For a while now I have been discussing, in other threads, the need to pre-paginate a document even for eBook reading. (Not all readers do this.) If you are pre-paginating anyway you can keep the hardbook pagination is the same auxiliary file that is used to keep the pagination of the document. Once this information is available it can be used to report the page number.

Dale

[NatCh]

True, but if you established a set format as a standard, then you could just calculate it on the fly for any book against the standard, you wouldn't have to store it. There's lots of ways to do this, surely one of them will suffice.

[jbenny]

DaleDe and NatCh - but how would you accomplish either of these in existing ebook formats? As I said, they are more limited in capability than a modern web browser.

[kovidgoyal]

I vote for paragraph numbering. Its the easiest to implement, the most robust across different renderer's and should have enough resolution to satisfy almost anybody. For applications that require individual line based addressing, a reflowable format is simply not the way to go.

For referencing individual lines, it would probably be better to reference the paragraph the line comes from and quote the line.

[DaleDe]

Originally Posted by jbenny

DaleDe and NatCh - but how would you accomplish either of these in existing ebook formats? As I said, they are more limited in capability than a modern web browser.

Actually as I noted most eBook readers already prepaginate the documents. My old eb1150 does this at the time the file is built for the two font sizes that it was built for. Sony does this as part of the connect download for the 3 fonts sizes and on the fly when a new font is selected from a file that has not been prepaginated. The pagination stuff is already in the code. It just needs to know the page boundaries and font sizes. Some of the other formats like MobiPocket do not do this well if at all. PDF, of course, always does since it is a print format.

If we can get rid of the requirement to match existing hard books then paragraph number is the way to go.

Dale

[NatCh]

Originally Posted by jbenny

DaleDe and NatCh - but how would you accomplish either of these in existing ebook formats? As I said, they are more limited in capability than a modern web browser.

You're right, we've kinda evolved two parallel discussions, how to do it presently as an add on, and how it might best be done as a considered system.