Poll: How often do you use X-Ray when it's available?

[j.p.s]

Originally Posted by vxf

As someone said above.... it's great for any Russian classic in which half of the character are named Alexander-something.

Does it tie all the different forms of the name of the same person together?

[sian]

Originally Posted by twobob

Nowhere near as much as I used to use the text-to-speech.

same here

[sian]

Originally Posted by twobob

Nowhere near as much as I used to use the text-to-speech.

im not sure what it really does so think ive look at it once and didnt really see the point of it

maybe it needs explaing to me better

[sian]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

What is X-Ray?

that what my thought was when first saw it

[copyrite]

Somewhere between always and rarely.

I really like the version of XRay on my Fire HD6. It's possible in this latest version to not get information on a character passed the point where you are in the book. Yeah, I've been inadvertently spoiled in the previous version.

[HarryT]

Given that I side-load all my content via Calibre, and hence never see any X-Ray information in my books, I've never used it.

[WT Sharpe]

I use it frequently but not always, which isn't an option. It's useful at times in keeping the characters straight.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

I use it frequently but not always, which isn't an option. It's useful at times in keeping the characters straight.

Yes, that is sometimes very necessary. My 3-volume printed edition of "War and Peace" came with its own bookmark, with all the family trees printed on it, which was very useful. There's an awful lots of complicated family relationships in "War and Peace".

[badgoodDeb]

Gee, and here I thought it was just created this month! I see this thread was started a year ago. I've had a K4 so maybe I ignored this kind of thing.

When I've lost track of who "Joe Schmuck" is, I just do a search on his name. I look at the first few instances of the name, and the expository info is right there. I can also thus stay away from the later instances of the find (anything later than the page I'm currently on) and avoid the spoilers.

[Dropout]

I will always check it out, to see how it breaks down the book. Sometimes it's really helpful. Especially if you are reading a series.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by badgoodDeb

...When I've lost track of who "Joe Schmuck" is, I just do a search on his name....

That's what I do when X-ray isn't available. Or if it's a classic, I'll go online to see in there's a cast of characters listed somewhere. Of course, I really like those writers who give a cast of characters up front, as some of the mystery writers do.

[Robmonster]

Originally Posted by elemenoP

I rarely use it, but when I do, I love it!

But here is my conundrum: I sometimes have a hard time keeping track of character names. This seems to happen to me often in mysteries, so it's very useful for me to be able to look up a character name and quickly refresh myself as to who that character is. But I feel that the little frequency distribution graph can be a kind of spoiler. Let's say I look up minor character Mr. X. If Mr. X occurs very frequently toward the end of the book, then he was probably in on it! If he only occurs once or twice for the rest of the book, then he's a red herring.

So I'm torn between loving the convenience of it, and wanting to avoid any possible spoilers. When I had my Sony reader, I sometimes had to search backwards on a character's name to remind myself who that character was. Better than a print book, but not as convenient as X-Ray.

eP

I totally hadn't considered the Spoiler potential of this.

[Anthem]

I barely use X-Ray. It is a neat little feature to have, and it has been made far more useful with the recent inclusion of the Notable Clips, which can very much help you get up to speed if you have been away from a book for awhile. Terms has always been a useful component of X-Ray. I also think the inclusion of Images in X-Ray (to quickly look at all of the images in a book) is a fantastic new feature to include.

X-Ray keeps getting better. With the Terms, Clips, and Images all now present, I believe I will begin to use it quite a bit more.

[Xanthe]

Since my first post in this thread, I've gotten a Fire HDX so I've actually used X-Ray, and have mixed feelings about its usefulness.

I was reading a scifi novel, and apparently the author lifted a lot of the character names from lesser-known military figures, so when I checked the X-Ray information on them, the info provided had absolutely nothing to do with the actual characters in the book.

I don't really find myself using it much.

[Ephemerality]

Originally Posted by Xanthe

I was reading a scifi novel, and apparently the author lifted a lot of the character names from lesser-known military figures, so when I checked the X-Ray information on them, the info provided had absolutely nothing to do with the actual characters in the book.

This was always the big issue I had with the X-Rays from Amazon, which is what inspired me to make my X-Ray building tool. Not always the best situation to have to build it yourself, but at least you can be sure that the terms don't link to useless Wikipedia entries.