"Locations" vs. Pages in K3 - AAAAAAAH!

[DiapDealer]

The reason pages are better is because it makes sense to people in an emotional way. Locations don't.

That's a statement that I have absolutely no problem with.

[susan_cassidy]

Originally Posted by foghat

Tangent continued...
Why have a scale so wide that moving from one degree to the next really doesn't mean much at all (i.e. can't really be felt).

Maybe for you, but I can feel 1 or 2 degree Fahrenheit changes in temperature very readily (I'm somewhat sensitive to temperature).

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Well "Pages" were never standard either, paper back page number is different than hardback page number for the same title etc. The reason pages are better is because it makes sense to people in an emotional way. Locations don't.

Percentages beat pages and locations and Kindle WiFi gives that information directly.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Percentages beat pages and locations and Kindle WiFi gives that information directly.

Well, I saw above where you claimed to always calculate % complete for paper books.....that's just kinda weird to me....

did you see this thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...60#post1140560

[foghat]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

Percentages beat pages and locations and Kindle WiFi gives that information directly.

Depends what you are looking for. I can think of a few cases where percentages are pretty much useless.

1. What if I want to get a sense for how 'big' a book is compared to the last one(s) I read.
2. What if I want to know about how much longer the book is?

Knowing that I am 17% into a book does not give me a great sense of how long the book is or how much more time it will take to read the remaining 83%. Unless, of course, I have been keeping accurate time of how long it took to read the first 17% and then break out my calculator.

[flandroid]

Seriously? Six pages and this thread still isn't even slowing down? Talk about First World Problems.

[sirmaru]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Well, I saw above where you claimed to always calculate % complete for paper books.....that's just kinda weird to me....

did you see this thread: https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...60#post1140560

If you don't like the Kindle method of percentages and locations, SEND IT BACK. Amazon gives you a 30 day no questions asked return period.

For me I love my new Kindle WiFi and every feature in it.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by sirmaru

If you don't like the Kindle method of percentages and locations, SEND IT BACK. Amazon gives you a 30 day no questions asked return period.

For me I love my new Kindle WiFi and every feature in it.

That's not the point, this discussion is about pages vs locations. Nothing to even do with percentages which is what you brought up and which I think is kinda weird. I agree with foghat in that percentage says nothing about how much or how little in absolute terms you have read or have left to read so in that sense it is meaningless. ( and I really don't believe you actually calculated this for paper books) Percentage is relative term whereas locations and pages are absolute since they are based on specific character counts. To each his own though.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by flandroid

Seriously? Six pages and this thread still isn't even slowing down? Talk about First World Problems.

Hee-Hee!

Some things are more important than others....clearly!

[Barty]

Nothing wrong with locations, but for the fact that I'm not a robot.

[Ken Irving]

<<F.Y.I., the American Psychological Association (APA) put out these guidelines for academic citations of Kindle content last summer:

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/20...-a-kindle.html>>

Guidelines like that are a good idea, but as the APA page points out, some suggested citation styles require you to have a particular reader, while others require the ebook to be formatted with citation in mind, and even then one has to count paragraphs in order to get a precise location. That's not easy to do even in a printed book, much less in a book you are seeing piece by piece on a screen. The fundamental problem is twofold: ebook formats were not made with citation by precise location in mind, and thus have no standards for this; and readers that use those formats tend to implement what standards there are very differently anyway. If academics get together and come up with a set of e-reader standards for "e-paginaton" that ereaders must use in order to be certified for academic use, that might force some consistency. Companies like Amazon and B&N that are actively courting the academic market will listen if they think not using a pagination standard will lose big sales, or give the competition an edge. Until then, it's like the wild west when it comes to finding your place in an ebook, and telling someone else just exactly where that place is.

[TenaciousBadger]

Originally Posted by Ken Irving

The fundamental problem is twofold: ebook formats were not made with citation by precise location in mind, and thus have no standards for this; and readers that use those formats tend to implement what standards there are very differently anyway. If academics get together and come up with a set of e-reader standards for "e-paginaton" that ereaders must use in order to be certified for academic use, that might force some consistency. Companies like Amazon and B&N that are actively courting the academic market will listen if they think not using a pagination standard will lose big sales, or give the competition an edge. Until then, it's like the wild west when it comes to finding your place in an ebook, and telling someone else just exactly where that place is.

it's what i'm crossing my fingers for.
i don't really have a lot of access to academic books so all i can do is buy them. i was all happy about that (even if the price is high enough to sting but, hey, the delivery is nigh instantaneous) but then i realised i might have a lot of headaches having to cite them.
so, even though my enthusiasm has waned significantly, i'm hoping a citing standard will be developed sooner rather than later.

[sirmaru]

I read books for information and entertainment. I am not part of academia and could care less what their standards are.

I am sure Amazon markets the Kindle WiFi for the mass market of book enthusiasts. Academia is not a big part of the mass market.

If I want to quote books in forum and chat rooms, the Kindle WiFi clipboard serves an excellent purpose. When I do that, I just reference the book title and possibly the author. Forums and chat rooms do not need chapters, pages or locations.

By the way, for academic purposes citing a book title, author, chapter and possible percent location would seem to be just fine. Pages of pBooks can be used to also calculate percentage locations and would be close enough to the Kindle location percentage.

When reading pBooks, I always did a quick calculation of percentage read by pages to see how far I was in the book and how quick it may end. I did it in my head without necessity of calculator use.

In religious forums and chat rooms using the Kindle eBibles do identify the exact Book, Chapter and Verse PRECISELY.

[Harmon]

Originally Posted by foghat

Tangent continued...

Well, more like 65 degrees of usefulness where I live. But even going with your 40 degrees. So what if there is only 40 degrees to play with? Each change in degree has meaning. That is perfect - from a non-scientific, 'human being living in normal environments' perspective.

Why have a scale so wide that moving from one degree to the next really doesn't mean much at all (i.e. can't really be felt). When I lived in the States, I looked at temperature in 5 degree chunks, as, in Fahrenheit, a change by a degree or 2 means next to nothing.

Maybe it has something to do with the 0 to to 100 range. That range encompasses the entire comfort zone plus, at either end, a discomfort zone. Most temperatures, most places, most of the time, are within those bounds. But if you get below 0 or above 100, you are clearly in the damned uncomfortable zone. Whereas with C, it's not clear where the damned uncomfortable zone is, exactly, and it's tough to know if you are risking going out to the discomfort zone. So the peculiar result is that the more rational system - C - is the less practical one.

I think that something like that is why people don't like locations. The numbers are too big to be able to position yourself, mentally. Someone on the thread said that he or she preferred to just look at the percentage, and on reflection, I find that I do, too. Zero to 100.

[Bad Astronaut]

Originally Posted by Harmon

Maybe it has something to do with the 0 to to 100 range. That range encompasses the entire comfort zone plus, at either end, a discomfort zone. Most temperatures, most places, most of the time, are within those bounds. But if you get below 0 or above 100, you are clearly in the damned uncomfortable zone. Whereas with C, it's not clear where the damned uncomfortable zone is, exactly, and it's tough to know if you are risking going out to the discomfort zone. So the peculiar result is that the more rational system - C - is the less practical one.

Obviously this is a tangent, but you only think that because you grew up with Fahrenheit and you're used to it. From my perspective there's nothing special about -18C that makes it a natural barrier between "damned uncomfortable" and "tolerable" or something like that. Whereas there is actually an observable difference between temperatures above and below 0C. Plus, being outside in below-freezing weather is pretty damned uncomfortable if you aren't dressed for it.