Page Numbers, Percentage, or nothing at all

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Stop reading KePub and read ePub...

That's what I'm going to do, which (since I use Linux where Obok is iffy) basically means that I won't be able to use the Kobo market on newer firmware if I want page counts that relate to reality. I'll keep a Mini (because of its size and because it's stuck at 3.19 and which uses something akin to real page numbers) and let the other Kobos go. I need fewer eReaders anyhow and this help make some of my decisions easier.

[ZodWallop]

This whole argument just seems so silly. Aside from scholarly/research use (which, let's be honest: none of us are discussing), why isn't 'one screenful of words = one page" perfectly valid?

Books change page count depending on their format and the size of the font used.

To use a popular example: Stephen King's It
Hardcover (original) - 1138 pages
Hardcover (current) - 1168 pages
Trade paperback (2016) - 1168 pages
Trade paperback (2019) - 1184 pages
Mass market paperback (1987) - 1104 pages
Mass market paperback (2016) - 1488 pages
Kindle - 1169 pages

And I'd guess the UK versions of the book don't match their US counterparts. Page numbers have never been a constant and I don't see why ebooks should be the exception.

If you are constantly switching devices to read the same book, the device will sync if used as intended. If you sideload, you remember where in the book you are, just like you did in the old days.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Jon, what's it going to take to get it through to you that ADE is a fake page number?

All page numbers are fake giving your logic. So either you get with reality oryou'll always be thinking this.

Also I am still waiting for you to hold a page out in an ebook using any system, though preferably your vaunted ADE. Added bonus challenge pull the same "length" "page" from another book with illustrations.

I can do that very easily. All I have to do is show you the screen on my H2O and thee, done

Different books, different page numbers. So your illustrations example is irrelevant.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

It was bad enough when ADE had page numbers on the side. Word count would be just as annoying and maybe more so given larger numbers.

ADE faux page numbers on the side is annoying because readers are typically small and don't have margins to put things like that. Print books have quite a lot of unused margin space which could easily accomodate word numbers there.

Or, you know, put the number of the first word of each page centered in the header or footer, or the outer top or bottom corners where page numbers are now.

Or something I haven't considered, yet.

ADE page numbers are not faux. They are the first page number system that actually works and it's still on the go now. It's the device makers that choose not to use RMSDK to read ePub that are at fault for not sticking witht he standard.

Adobe people have described it as faking it. If they can call it fake then I can call it fake.

Standards are things established by authority or custom, or by joint agreement. Adobe pulling a hack out of the metaphorical orifice located between their metaphorical buttocks is not a standard.

It's the device makers' faults for not paying Adobe for their proprietary software. Uh-huh. Plonk.

[ratinox]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

This whole argument just seems so silly. Aside from scholarly/research use (which, let's be honest: none of us are discussing), why isn't 'one screenful of words = one page" perfectly valid?

Because some people can't be bothered to figure out how to go from an Aura One with 12 point text to a Kindle Paperwhite with 10 point text.

But seriously, it is perfectly valid. In fact, if you read that quote from Ric that I linked you'll see that Adobe originally wanted their RMSDK pages to be exactly that: one page = one screen. But Adobe couldn't do it because the Sony readers of the day didn't have the processing power. So they faked it.

Changing page counts on the fly weirds me. It kind of works for small-ish documents where you can have a bank of buttons to go to specific pages (like iRex did with iLiad) but it doesn't scale for large books.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by ratinox

Because some people can't be bothered to figure out how to go from an Aura One with 12 point text to a Kindle Paperwhite with 10 point text.

It would not only be the font size, but the font, kerning, hyphenation, line height, margins, screen size, and other things that make it nearly impossible to match the page numbers if 1 page = 1 screen between a Kobo and a Kindle.

But seriously, it is perfectly valid. In fact, if you read that quote from Ric that I linked you'll see that Adobe originally wanted their RMSDK pages to be exactly that: one page = one screen. But Adobe couldn't do it because the Sony readers of the day didn't have the processing power. So they faked it.

But it turns out that Adobe did it better then they wanted to. They did it in a way that works.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

All page numbers are fake giving your logic. So either you get with reality oryou'll always be thinking this.

I can do that very easily. All I have to do is show you the screen on my H2O and thee, done

Different books, different page numbers. So your illustrations example is irrelevant.

Uh Jon I hate to break this to you, well rather I hate breaking this to you for the millionth time, but yes page numbers are fake. That’s reality. Also your oh so loved ADE system is even worse because it’s fake on fake.

Now you’ve still failed to show me a digital page. You’ve shown me the screen of your device which according to you isn’t a page unless ADE says it is and ADE can display multiple pages on a screen depending where you are in the book. Additionally since screens are different sizes your page fails another consistency test.

Also the point of the last bit was that ADE does just that it isn’t consistent with what a page is since it’s byte based. So an image will throw it for a loop.

I noticed you haven’t reacted to an Adobe staff member literally saying it was all fake numbers

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

This whole argument just seems so silly. Aside from scholarly/research use (which, let's be honest: none of us are discussing), why isn't 'one screenful of words = one page" perfectly valid?

Not if I want to know the comparative length of a book. My daughter wanted me to read a book titled Social. So I bought it from Kobo. Amazon shows the hardback and paperback versions of this book to both be 384 pages. The KePub version of this book on my Mini is 400 pages. I made an ePub version of the book, which came out to 407 pages (which is constant on my Sony, Tolino and Nook). This is relative correlation. By looking at either the KePub (in the old scheme) or the ePub I can get a decent idea of how long the book is. With the new Kobo firmware, the book is 862 pages... unless I change the font (not size) from Georgia to Malabar, now it's 994 pages. But Malabar looks a little big, so I take it down a notch, now it's 835 pages. I don't want Malabar after all, so I switch to Open Dyslexic, not it's 727 pages. It's a bit small, so I tick the font size up a notch and we're back to 862 pages. Tick it up another notch and I'm at 1007 pages. In other words, no correlation whatsoever to the paperback or hardback books. (Or even to itself.) I don't like it. Why bother with "page" numbers at all? Just go with percentages when the "page" numbers are meaningless and arbitrary.

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

Books change page count depending on their format and the size of the font used.

To use a popular example: Stephen King's It
Hardcover (original) - 1138 pages
Hardcover (current) - 1168 pages
Trade paperback (2016) - 1168 pages
Trade paperback (2019) - 1184 pages
Mass market paperback (1987) - 1104 pages
Mass market paperback (2016) - 1488 pages
Kindle - 1169 pages

Yeah, but you're talking about different editions, not the same edition released at the same time on different formats. There may even be (probably is, considering this is Stephen King) editorial changes in the different editions. It's not a one for one comparison.

[MGlitch]

Since we seem to be divided into two camps, the adjust to the future camp, and the stay with the standards camp...

So, these books are, largely, all written on a computer. Likely in MS Word or something (I know George R.R. Martin uses some depreciated word processing program but I'd imagine this holds true even on that.

When you change the font, change the size, change line spacing, change the margins, etc. what happens in these programs? Oh? Does the page count increase?

If anything that would be the closest representation to a "page" we have for ebooks, since it's a direct correlation to a physical page printed from that computer. Of course you can squeeze a ton of type on it, or expand a single letter to take the whole page. And until you print it out and can no longer adjust it (thus invalidating it as a comparison to a format which can be nigh infinitely adjusted), any change to the type does exactly what the current Kobo software does.

There's your standard: digital pages always adjusted to typographical changes, until ADE came along and derailed the standard. Finally Kobo has returned us to the original standard by which a digital page was measured.

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by rcentros

Not if I want to know the comparative length of a book.

You could check the page count when you buy it.

To be honest, if I want to read a book, I rarely pay attention to overall length, so I won't pretend to be an expert here.

Yeah, but you're talking about different editions, not the same edition released at the same time on different formats.

The editions of It are all the exact same words printed on paper of different sizes, with different sized fonts. Much like the difference between a Forma, Libra and Clara. Expecting page numbers to match across all three screen sizes seems strange to me.

The same goes for changing fonts. Different fonts take different amounts of space.

There may even be (probably is, considering this is Stephen King) editorial changes in the different editions. It's not a one for one comparison.

I doubt there's a difference between the US/UK editions of It besides word spelling.

[MGlitch]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You could check the page count when you buy it.

To be honest, if I want to read a book, I rarely pay attention to overall length, so I won't pretend to be an expert here.

His argument is that since that this number shifts. Despite the fact that anything related to it also shifts by an equal amount. Thus somehow making it impossible to have a correlation to physical books.

What I find odd is the need to compare book lengths. If a story is good at 20 pages/screens/whatever the equivalent is in bytes for ADE/etc it’s good. If a story is bad in 500 of the same it’s bad. I could almost understand it if someone was switching between physical and ebook for the same book except as I’ve gone on about they’re different media akin to audio books. People doing this will have to adjust.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

Since we seem to be divided into two camps, the adjust to the future camp, and the stay with the standards camp...

So, these books are, largely, all written on a computer. Likely in MS Word or something (I know George R.R. Martin uses some depreciated word processing program but I'd imagine this holds true even on that.

When you change the font, change the size, change line spacing, change the margins, etc. what happens in these programs? Oh? Does the page count increase?

WordStar. I still write in the jstar variant of JOE (Joe's Own Editor) because it uses the WordStar keystrokes. And it, like DOS WordStar, uses standard command line, fixed fonts — which is usually a Courier (fixed) font when printed (to paper or PDF). So, yes, the pages are consistent. Double-spaced, about 250 words per page. And they're sent to publishers in this standard manuscript format.

The same thing is true with screenplays. When formatting a screenplay you use a Courier font (10 pitch — 10 characters per inch — on typewriters) now 12 point on computers. The reason you do this is because each page (when properly formatted in screenplay format) equals about one minute of screen time. So a 90 page screenplay works out (approximately) to a 90 minute movie. This is another standard.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

If anything that would be the closest representation to a "page" we have for ebooks, since it's a direct correlation to a physical page printed from that computer. Of course you can squeeze a ton of type on it, or expand a single letter to take the whole page. And until you print it out and can no longer adjust it (thus invalidating it as a comparison to a format which can be nigh infinitely adjusted), any change to the type does exactly what the current Kobo software does.

Except, as mentioned above, writers don't do that. Publishers require a standard manuscript format. If you know what you're doing, you don't experiment with various font faces and sizes. You stick to the standard.

Originally Posted by MGlitch

There's your standard: digital pages always adjusted to typographical changes, until ADE came along and derailed the standard. Finally Kobo has returned us to the original standard by which a digital page was measured.

Except it's not. Digital pages could be adjusted, but they weren't. Writers still emulate typewritten pages because publishers require a consistent, standard format. ePub and KePub (old scheme) page numbers somehow managed to closely correlate to the number of printed pages in printed books — until now. Now Kobo's KePub scheme is arbitrary and (in my opinion) useless. A "standard" page count based on something that can be changed by any change in font or font size is not a standard. It's a waste of time. Just work by percentages and forget about calling these "page" numbers. At least then it would make sense.

Really it's calling these arbitrary numbers "pages" that bothers me. Call them anything else and it probably wouldn't be as big a deal, but they would still be useless. Kindle used "location" numbers (still does on some books) instead of page numbers. You couldn't correlate them with page numbers either, but at least they were consistent and the location on one Kindle equaled the location on another (even if you changed font size or face).

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

You could check the page count when you buy it.

To be honest, if I want to read a book, I rarely pay attention to overall length, so I won't pretend to be an expert here.

I look at it this way. When I'm deciding which book to read next, the length will often be a deciding factor. "I've got so many hours before... I should be able to finish this book in that time."

And I still "see" (and think) printed books when I sit down to read eBooks. Wasn't the whole point of an eInk eReader to emulate the printed reading experience? Isn't page count one of those features. When I was in college and working for a book and magazine distributor, the price of paperback books was mostly based on the length of the book. That's why there were so many books written with needless filler (I think they still do it).

Yes, easily gauging the length of a book is important to me — as is reading the front material (preface, etc.). Call me a Luddite.

[rcentros]

Originally Posted by MGlitch

His argument is that since that this number shifts. Despite the fact that anything related to it also shifts by an equal amount. Thus somehow making it impossible to have a correlation to physical books.

What I find odd is the need to compare book lengths. If a story is good at 20 pages/screens/whatever the equivalent is in bytes for ADE/etc it’s good. If a story is bad in 500 of the same it’s bad. I could almost understand it if someone was switching between physical and ebook for the same book except as I’ve gone on about they’re different media akin to audio books. People doing this will have to adjust.

As mentioned in another post, there's many reasons why gauging the length of a book is important to me. Probably the biggest reason is that I want to emulate the experience of reading a printed book as much as possible. Since eBooks don't have visual heft and size, the only way I can gauge their length is via a consistent page numbering scheme that relatively correlates to a printed book. It's really that simple. It may not be important to you, but it is to me.

(So much for getting out of this thread.)

[dordale]

As I mentioned before, I personally like having a dynamic numbering system that represents screens rather than a fixed "page" size. I'm very happy with the introduction of this in the new firmware versions.

As others have mentioned, if you prefer a fixed "page" size the solution is to use ePubs instead of kePubs. Rcentros has made some valid arguments as to why this isn't always the best solution. Kobo seems to be lot better at giving people options than Amazon is. Maybe in a future firmware release they'll give us both options of "pages" and "screens".

I personally hope they don't go back to the old way of counting total book pages without giving users the option to use screen counts instead.