Glo Inaccurate page count...

[guma]

Seeing that there are convincing arguments for all obvious ways to deal with page numbers in e books (ade pages, % read, n screens...) and people appear to have different preferences the right way to deal with the issue would be to offer the user the option to choose. since programming any of these options is rather straightforward I cannot see any reason why an ebook os could not implement them all at once.

[TechniSol]

Well, the most obvious reason why they won't implement them all is that code = $, often $$$, or so directors of human resources have been known to hint at...

The next good reason is that there is limited processing ability inversely proportional to the lack of patience of the average user.

Last, code space is at a minimum due to the inclusion of highly necessary high level and informative features such as the credits page, New user's guide, dual processing engines for epubs and kepubs and options for multiple time and date formats.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

Makes me think life would be much simpler all around if each chapter of the book was always it's own file and had only one chapter heading and contents. Sigil seems to excel at that model and it makes the most sense for anyone using it. It'd be nice if the ereader manufacturers managed to include code to clean up ratty epubs, but frankly why do anything to encourage people not to buy nicely formatted books from their stores? Can't really blame them for that.

It would be much simpler and would save me the trouble of using Sigil to split epubs that came in one large file into separate chapter files. Now if the publishers would stop putting all the formatting code into the chapter files and not in a stylesheet, that would be simplify matters even more.

My current record holder for a ratty epub is one my daughter recently purchased from the author's website. The epub was created from a Word generated HTML file and split into 4 files with about 5 chapters each. Each file had over 1000 lines of crap at the start not to mention a fine collection of empty <span> tags. Those chapter files were also stored uncompressed -- only the mimetype file must be stored that way -- and all the files were in the root of the archive. The total file size was in the 2.4MB range.

After 15 minutes of effort with Sigil, the file size dropped to 400KB and opened a lot faster on her Touch.

Hmmm... reminds me that it is about time for another donation to the Sigil development effort.

Regards,
David

Publishers just don't seem to care about the digital format. They're clinging tooth and nail to physical books. Lets ignore the bad formatting for a second, how often have you bought books that are filled with typos and errors that looks like it was literally scanned through OCR without any proofreading at the final product, and just pushed into the digital store as is, and sold at the same price and sometimes even higher than the print product?

[robko]

Originally Posted by jclim00

Publishers just don't seem to care about the digital format. They're clinging tooth and nail to physical books. Lets ignore the bad formatting for a second, how often have you bought books that are filled with typos and errors that looks like it was literally scanned through OCR without any proofreading at the final product, and just pushed into the digital store as is, and sold at the same price and sometimes even higher than the print product?

That is soooooooo frustrating. It's even more annoying since a lot of these errors would be picked up by a simple spell check which says a lot about how much effort was put into it.

[TechniSol]

What you are saying is very true. There are more and more simple spelling errors or OCR errors while publishers continue to defend ebook prices near paper prices because they still have to spend so much on editing... Uh, huh. Apparently production and material costs for paper books are nearly free!

I don't have a problem with publishers making a profit, but the blowing of smoke up my non existent skirt annoys me.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

What you are saying is very true. There are more and more simple spelling errors or OCR errors while publishers continue to defend ebook prices near paper prices because they still have to spend so much on editing... Uh, huh. Apparently production and material costs for paper books are nearly free!

I don't have a problem with publishers making a profit, but the blowing of smoke up my non existent skirt annoys me.

I seem to remember that on the Baen booksite at one time Eric Flint was discussing why Baen charged what they did for an ebook compared to a hardcover or paperback and the statement was made that an ebook sold for $6 was more profitable than a hardcover sold for $30 -- and no government taxes on inventory. Hmmm... just how do you count inventory on ebooks?

One other SF publisher whom I'm not going to name sent me a reply when I asked why a hardcover they published had very noticeable errors to the effect that their authors did their own spell checking prior to electronically submitting the books. We all know just how good modern spellcheckers are but when the author typed "forget" instead of "forgive" 3 times in the same chapter, you might be forgiven for wondering if anyone really cares about their product.

Regards,
David