Indexes without page numbers?

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

I do not understand your point. If I want to be read with old devices I have to use only ePub2. But ePub2 is not the "state of the art" in digital publishing: it is *really* a poor standard. EPUB3 also is not the "state of the art", but when I build an ebook I have to think if the content I want to communicate to users could work better in EPUB3, if the users I'm thinking of uses tablet or desktop.
I do not love EPUB3, but I do not love ePub2. If e-ink eraders could have a good support of EPUB3 I could build more interesting ebooks.

The thing is, RMDSk (ADE) is most used for reading ePub. The problem is that you won't know the version in use. You cannot assume the latest version or that the person reading your eBook will even be able to update. A lot of Readers in use have a fixed version of RMDSK (because they are no longer supported). So by using an interactive ePub 3 eBook, you will be cutting out a lot of potential customers. I have not seen a bookstore's website that's able to specify that the eBook is ePub 3 and is not ePub 2 compatible. The ePub 3 being made these days is backwards compatible but it sounds like yours would not be.

[ekbell]

Originally Posted by Hitch

It's not that I don't think that you (or anyone) cannot create a complex, nested indices; it's how we do that, and do not strand the reader that concerns me.

For example, let's say we have my previously-used example (here at Mobile Read) of a book on Dogs. We have in this an entry, on Irish Setters. In the Index, the following items ALL go to that entry:

Setters, Irish
Long-Coated Dogs;
Hunting Dogs;
Family-suitable Dogs;
Large Dog Breeds;
Dogs that need significant exercise.

All six, let's say, of these items go to the SAME entry.

Now, let's say that I'm Jane, and I'm seeking a dog that will suit my lifestyle, get along with my kids and so forth. So, I've skimmed the book--and now I'm using the Index to help me in my search.

When I use a print book, I have the luxury of sticking a thumb in the Index page I'm on, and flip to the page that I found in that same index. So, in "family-suitable dogs," I see the Irish Setter entry. In print, I flip to page 55; I skim it, and then I flip back to that same Index entry, and move on to the next dog in that list that catches my eye in the Family-friendly Index list. Right?

But now I'm in the ebook. I go to Family-suitable dogs, and I see Irish Setters. I click the link, to go to the Irish Setter entry.

How do I get BACK to "Family Suitable Dogs?"

To me, this is the single biggest stumbling block in creating two-way linked eBooks. It's not the simple stuff, linking from Index entry 1 to page X. It's the a) multi-page items (e.g., "page 75-80"), and b) how you solve the multi-targeted landing page/item.

To me, that's the biggest single issue.

Hitch

Your example does a good job of demonstrating the value of linked indexes over simply relying on the reader's search function.

As a reader I find that the ability to bookmark is all I need when dealing a one-way links. (it's a pretty good thumb substitute ) The fact that most readers provide a way to backtrack is gravy.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ekbell

Your example does a good job of demonstrating the value of linked indexes over simply relying on the reader's search function.

As a reader I find that the ability to bookmark is all I need when dealing a one-way links. (it's a pretty good thumb substitute ) The fact that most readers provide a way to backtrack is gravy.

I feel rather strongly about the value of indices; I use them ALL the time! But, of course, I also feel queasy about the idea of using 5 separate backlinks to take someone (back) to the "Family-Suitable Dogs" index entry, rather than the other 4 anchors that had that entry as a target.

Someday! Someday, we'll have a really good way for this to work. (Hell, maybe a solidly-functioning "back" key/button will be enough.)

So, I'm in the corner of indices, solidly. I just wish that the soft/firmware made it a bit less clunky.

Hitch

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The thing is, RMDSk (ADE) is most used for reading ePub. The problem is that you won't know the version in use. You cannot assume the latest version or that the person reading your eBook will even be able to update. A lot of Readers in use have a fixed version of RMDSK (because they are no longer supported). So by using an interactive ePub 3 eBook, you will be cutting out a lot of potential customers. I have not seen a bookstore's website that's able to specify that the eBook is ePub 3 and is not ePub 2 compatible. The ePub 3 being made these days is backwards compatible but it sounds like yours would not be.

Publishing interactive ebook now means cut potential costumers, this is true - btw - because Kindle do not allow to use javascript in kf8, so you can not convert EPUB3 for the Amazon world. But, as publisher and writer, I need to do this because the digital reading is stagnating: on one side we have low-profile ebook that are not "digital books" but "digitalised book". On the other side we have real digital ebook... build as App, or wunderkammer fixed layout. I think publishers have to show that interactive ebooks are a normal form of contemporary narrative and not an exotic extravaganza for tablet.

f.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

Publishing interactive ebook now means cut potential costumers, this is true - btw - because Kindle do not allow to use javascript in kf8, so you can not convert EPUB3 for the Amazon world. But, as publisher and writer, I need to do this because the digital reading is stagnating: on one side we have low-profile ebook that are not "digital books" but "digitalised book". On the other side we have real digital ebook... build as App, or wunderkammer fixed layout. I think publishers have to show that interactive ebooks are a normal form of contemporary narrative and not an exotic extravaganza for tablet.

f.

I don't think sales will justify the time/effort to create interactive eBooks. The problem is most reading software has not caught up to handling interactive ePub 3. I don't know if Access and/or RMDSK on my H2O will handle interactive ePub 3. I know my nook STR and Sony Reader PRS-T1 won't handle them. There are a lot of Readers out there being used where interactive ePub 3 will not work. And given that Kindle's won't as well, that leaves out most people who read eBooks.

You would need people who read on a smartphone or tablet to do the bulk of the purchases of these interactive eBooks. The software has to handle things before the eBooks are available because it's no good creating the eBooks when there's not really that many ways to read them.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I don't think sales will justify the time/effort to create interactive eBooks. The problem is most reading software has not caught up to handling interactive ePub 3. I don't know if Access and/or RMDSK on my H2O will handle interactive ePub 3. I know my nook STR and Sony Reader PRS-T1 won't handle them. There are a lot of Readers out there being used where interactive ePub 3 will not work. And given that Kindle's won't as well, that leaves out most people who read eBooks.

You would need people who read on a smartphone or tablet to do the bulk of the purchases of these interactive eBooks. The software has to handle things before the eBooks are available because it's no good creating the eBooks when there's not really that many ways to read them.

Well, we are talking about two different things: you're talking about maintaining a system that keeps down the level of digital reading. From this point of view you are right, most e-readers still have not a decent EPUB3 support. We are forced to build obsolete ePub2.
I am instead talking about what a publisher has to do to to include in its workflow process works that are intimately digital literature. If the big readers only want to read book digitalised, we have to offer more mature alternatives for digital reading. Maybe we can also reach the goal of find new people that do not read book, but could have interest in interactive reading.
My last electronic poetry ebook sell more than other poetry ebook "static" we done in past. We are talking about small "print runs", but I think it is an interesting field to explore.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

Well, we are talking about two different things: you're talking about maintaining a system that keeps down the level of digital reading. From this point of view you are right, most e-readers still have not a decent EPUB3 support. We are forced to build obsolete ePub2.
I am instead talking about what a publisher has to do to to include in its workflow process works that are intimately digital literature. If the big readers only want to read book digitalised, we have to offer more mature alternatives for digital reading. Maybe we can also reach the goal of find new people that do not read book, but could have interest in interactive reading.
My last electronic poetry ebook sell more than other poetry ebook "static" we done in past. We are talking about small "print runs", but I think it is an interesting field to explore.

I think that the difference in viewpoint is that many of us--and I include myself in this--think that a book and an "app" are not the same thing. A book, especially fiction, really has no innate need of videos, music, and so on. (One noteworthy thing--anyone remember the book that was the "big new format," the "Immersedition" of The Survivors by Amanda Havard or Haward? Can't recall her name? And that went...where? NOWHERE. It was going to be the big deal, was a huge splash at the 2012 Frankfurt Fair, I think it was, and that website is deader'n Julius Caesar.)

I can easily see--as I've said before--that cookbooks and other "how to" books could use videos. Maybe. I'm an experienced cook, for example; I don't need videos of someone whisking a merinque. An inexperienced cook may need that, but I also tend to think that most seekers of information will turn to Youtube, Vimeo, and the like, to find a variety of options.

I personally don't like having to suffer through book trailers. I have seen one, in 8 years, that made me want to buy the book. The other challenge is, eBooks grow increasingly cheaper, not more expensive, so who's going to want to spend the money to create these app-ier versions, with video, soundtracks and the like? I cannot tell you how many folks out there think that they shouldn't pay more than $25 to have an eBook created.

(This reminds me of all the "radio play" style eBooks and podcasts being produced out there, with developers madly convinced that the radio-play style was going to be huge, make a big comeback. <----------crickets--------->)

So, your take, fbrzvnrnd, is that a true digital book will be an app, essentially. It will be multimedia. Many others, like Jon, think that an app is an app--not an eBook.

That's the issue. It's not that eBooks are being held down; it's that Amazon (which we all have to agree, in terms of book consumption, is the bellwhether) constantly tests its user base, to feel out what they want. If and when they think that they've inherited the consumption-class of Apple users, they'll likely start serving that type of easily consumable and disposable content.

FWIW: we have a very high percentage base of Mac users, as clients, which sort of makes sense. All the creatives, right-brainers, right? Well, many of them were WILD to do videos in their iBooks-destined ePUBs, starting at least five years ago, maybe more. Wanna know how many still bother? Wild guess?

Not ONE. Not one customer of ours, that used to, still bothers to put videos in their eBooks. They've found that the inclusion makes sweet FA difference in sales; all it does is increase their expense. And they aren't talking about Amazon--they're talking about sales on iBooks, where the user base is already accustomed to that type of consumable.

That's worth considering, certainly, before deciding to leap whole hog into multimedia content.

Me? I'll make whatever the marketplace tells me to make. As a consumer, though, unless I have a burning need for how-to, I'll take my books vanilla. Just the text, ma'am.


Hitch

[fbrzvnrnd]

I think that here there is another BIG misunderstanding with regard to electronic literature. That "electronic literature" will be text with some video inside. This is not electronic literature and this is not multimedia, this is "text with some video inside".
I'll try to make some example: I have build three EPUB3 in last two year. One is a reflow ebook with media overlay: a man record his phone calls to political figures and transcribes it. The EPUB allow to read the transcription and listen the original phone call. The second EPUB3 is a avant-garde novel that changes his chapters contents every month, like a ever changing book. The last EPUB3 is a electronic poetry book, with lyrics hidden, changing in time, moving in space according to reader touches.
So: no video at all.
EPUB3 is not only multimedia and the axiom "EPUB3=video" has impoverished the true potential of the format and made to believe that doing EPUB3 is economically unsustainable.
And, talking about APP, there are a lot of Apps that use electronic literature and have no video or multimedia at all: see Lifeline, or Alexandria. Some of those application had a good answer from readers, and could be ebooks instead Apps

[SigilBear]

I was excited when I first learned that you can embed videos in epubs. I think it would be cool to make an epub that features an article about polar bears accompanied by a brief video of polar bears. I also think it would be cool to reinforce ideas by explaining them twice - in text and in video format.

But, just as I expected, file size is a killer.

I'm still thinking of including a very short video in some of my books in which I can introduce myself and offer a brief introduction to the book's subject. Again, that's something that can easily be done with text, but I think it would be cool to offer another perspective in the form of a video.

I'm also thinking of creating a children's book about the fifty states that includes audio files that feature nothing more than each state' name. For example, when you read about Wyoming, you could click the audio file and hear "Wyoming."

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

I think that here there is another BIG misunderstanding with regard to electronic literature. That "electronic literature" will be text with some video inside. This is not electronic literature and this is not multimedia, this is "text with some video inside".
I'll try to make some example: I have build three EPUB3 in last two year. One is a reflow ebook with media overlay: a man record his phone calls to political figures and transcribes it. The EPUB allow to read the transcription and listen the original phone call. The second EPUB3 is a avant-garde novel that changes his chapters contents every month, like a ever changing book. The last EPUB3 is a electronic poetry book, with lyrics hidden, changing in time, moving in space according to reader touches.
So: no video at all.
EPUB3 is not only multimedia and the axiom "EPUB3=video" has impoverished the true potential of the format and made to believe that doing EPUB3 is economically unsustainable.
And, talking about APP, there are a lot of Apps that use electronic literature and have no video or multimedia at all: see Lifeline, or Alexandria. Some of those application had a good answer from readers, and could be ebooks instead Apps

No, I am not automatically relegating ePUB3 to movies. You misunderstand me.

But what I do think is that what you're describing aren't books or literature, either. They are likely something else; but they aren't books in the normal sense.

A document that's the transcriptions of some guy's phone calls to politicians? How's that a book? That's an audio file. The avant-garde or experimental fiction--which is basically a never-ending serial--that's probably experimental fiction.

However, that ePUB3 file cannot, and does not, change magically for the user. Right? It's not like you're reaching through the airwaves and altering the file without their participation. They either have to re-download or newly download or (insert something here) to get the updated content.

The poetry? Can't speak to that. Again, I've seen a ton of "experimental fiction" in the last 8 years. That would likely be what I'd concur is a book in the usual sense.

Just because you can create something in ePUB 3, or ePUB2, doesn't make it a book. I get what excites you, and all that, but again, to me, those are more apps than literature.

{shrug}

FWIW.

Hitch

[Jellby]

Hopscotch is maybe an example of "true" literature that would benefit from some level of interactivity. But it is an "experimental" work nevertheless, and easily done in ePub 2.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by Hitch

No, I am not automatically relegating ePUB3 to movies. You misunderstand me.

But what I do think is that what you're describing aren't books or literature, either. They are likely something else; but they aren't books in the normal sense.

electronic literature is... literature and it is not a book. Book is not the only way to transmit culture, novels, news. But this is not a my strange idea: electronic literature is studied in the academic and critical field.

Originally Posted by Hitch

A document that's the transcriptions of some guy's phone calls to politicians? How's that a book? That's an audio file.

Waiting Godot? A document with some man talking? How's that a book? That's paper.

Originally Posted by Hitch

However, that ePUB3 file cannot, and does not, change magically for the user. Right? It's not like you're reaching through the airwaves and altering the file without their participation. They either have to re-download or newly download or (insert something here) to get the updated content.

No re-download al all. I do not call it "magic", I call it "javascript".

Originally Posted by Hitch

Just because you can create something in ePUB 3, or ePUB2, doesn't make it a book. I get what excites you, and all that, but again, to me, those are more apps than literature.

Book? I do not want to make book, I want to share novels, culture, information, game. If ebooks were just mechanical copies of books, all this digital revolution would be a missed opportunity.

[fbrzvnrnd]

Originally Posted by Jellby

Hopscotch is maybe an example of "true" literature that would benefit from some level of interactivity. But it is an "experimental" work nevertheless, and easily done in ePub 2.

Yes, Rayuela it is a good example. I can add Nabokov's "Pale Fire", "S. The Teseo's Ship", Johnson's "The Unfortunates"... there are lot of example of non-linear reading in paper. But are culture, and are literature.
We made some ePub2 based on same concept, hypertext fiction, where you read following link inside the pages, not only turning.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

electronic literature is... literature and it is not a book. Book is not the only way to transmit culture, novels, news. But this is not a my strange idea: electronic literature is studied in the academic and critical field.

Oh, well. Sorry, but if there are arguments in the world designed to change my view, telling me that some academic is "studying" it is the very last way. Academia spends its entire existence in love with itself and blithely ignoring anything in the workaday world. Been there, done that.

Waiting Godot? A document with some man talking? How's that a book? That's paper.

No. It's still a book. Even if a book is simply dialogue, from one end to the other, it's a book.

When I listen to some guy talking, or, I see an interpretation of a book, on a screen, with live people playing the roles of characters in the written book, I call that a movie. Or, if someone reads a book to me, on some sort of recorded medium, it's an audiobook.

No re-download al all. I do not call it "magic", I call it "javascript".

Fine. I'm sure that there will always be folks who want to play with this stuff.

Book? I do not want to make book, I want to share novels, culture, information, game. If ebooks were just mechanical copies of books, all this digital revolution would be a missed opportunity.

Well, to each their own. As I said upthread, if someone wants to pay us to do this sort of thing, great. I've listened to this discussion before, how XXX was going to change entertainment, or the client I had that was going to change audiobooks forever with radio-play style recordings, yabbita. Right up to the point he went Tango Uniform.

{shrug}. You're going to do what you want, and I wish you luck with it. If ePUB3 helps you get there, more power to you.

For many of the rest of us, it's mostly all about foofery or multimedia. You yourself have described most of what you're doing as experimental fiction.

Or, for example, if you're me, you'll get a stream of ePUB3 books to "fix," because people push a button on something like Vellum or INDD, and then the damned things don't work. I have three books inhouse like that right now. (And, of course, folks who want to pay $10 to have them fixed.)

You're enjoying what you can do with ePUB3. That's great. Commercially, at the moment, if you look at the major devices, it's still barely supported (or, I should say, most of the more-advanced ePUB3 capabilities are not supported). Perhaps in 5-10 years, we'll be onto ePUB4 or 5 or 10. And you'll be able to make multi-media (in the literal sense) offerings that combine everything into what you'll call an eBook.

Hitch

[Tex2002ans]

Originally Posted by Hitch

A document that's the transcriptions of some guy's phone calls to politicians? How's that a book?

I think you were looking for a book of transcriptions.

I could potentially see some usage for EPUB3 in that situation. There are a few podcasts I listen to which provide transcriptions of episodes in HTML/EPUB form.

But for the most part I would say people would prefer EITHER/OR:

• Those who just download the audio files and listen to the ~30 minute episode
• Those who just read the transcripts.

I would say there isn't much overlap in the people who would want both at the same time. (I wouldn't want that bloated audio-EPUB3 clogging up tons of space on my device.)

Side Note: I did work on a book about JFK which included some transcriptions of important court cases. Perhaps having the actual recorded audio attached might be helpful there too as a step up from a purely text-based book.

Side Note #2: The only other few cases I could think of off the top of my head are:

• Children's books (sing-along style where they highlight as it talks)
• Music books (it might be nice to be able to hear a song instead of just seeing purely written lyrics/notes).
  
  • Or there are some fantasy books where authors include songs... I personally have zero idea how the author intended it to sound... and mostly just skim right past those sections.
• MAYBE some foreign-language books where you might want to hear a native speak

Although some of this might be better implemented with the EPUB3 CSS3 Speech stuff.

Originally Posted by fbrzvnrnd

No re-download al all. I do not call it "magic", I call it "javascript".

Side Note: Now, I haven't looked specifically at any of fbrzvnrnd's EPUB3 examples yet, but I fear for accessibility in a lot of these Javascript-heavy environments. For example, a growing trend I see is stuff like news websites that use Javascript to load the entire articles with zero fallback, or hiding things behind a "See More" which requires Javascript to load the rest of the article... Makes me want to absolutely pull my hair out.

Originally Posted by Jellby

Hopscotch is maybe an example of "true" literature that would benefit from some level of interactivity. But it is an "experimental" work nevertheless, and easily done in ePub 2.

Interesting... thanks for the example.