[Help] How do I get Calibre to show the correct, non-arbitrary page number?

[todiwan]

Calibre always seems to display some strange, absurdly high and seemingly arbitrary page number instead of the actual number of pages a book has. For example, this book with ~330 pages showed up as around 700 pages in Calbre. Changing font size did not affect it. I'm not sure why this is a thing.

I'm referring to "position in book" field in top left (bottom left in full screen). Thanks!

[eschwartz]

How do you define a non-arbitrary page number?

Every ereader software has its own way of calculating that. Although several of them use Adobe's RMSDK, and share the adobe calculation method.

Pagenumbers are a horrendous mess of non-standardization. And that is before considering "which edition are you comparing it to", IF using "real" page numbers at all.

...

I think calibre uses a section.paragraph calculation of some sort, which is intended to provide unambiguous citation references.
It isn't a page number.

[todiwan]

I see. I thought that ebook files (mobi, epub, etc.) had clear page separation as physical books, or .pdf files do, and that Calibre was just messing with it and using its own algorithms to come up with a "more useful" number or something. So, that is not the case?

Basically the only reason I'm asking this, is because I started using the "goodreads" site, which has a feature that tracks pages. Unless the ebooks I'm reading have the same amount of pages as it says on goodreads (which I assumed would be true by default), I can't use that feature. But it's not a big deal anyway, I'm just trying to make things a bit more convenient for myself.

Is there a way to make it so that the field displays a percentage (which shows when you hover anyway) instead of a "X / Y"?

[JSWolf]

Forget it. The staff at Goodreads have no clue how to handle eBook page numbers. if there is one, it's usually some pBook version page number which is wrong I've given staff the proper ePub page number along with screen shots from ADE to prove it's correct and yet they insist on doing it wrong.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by todiwan

Is there a way to make it so that the field displays a percentage (which shows when you hover anyway) instead of a "X / Y"?

I don't think so - good idea though, perhaps via a Viewer Preference setting that toggled percent or the reference position.

However, the Viewer as it exists now is at End of Life so it won't be enhanced. The new browser based Viewer is under development so perhaps it will incorporate either/or or both. I ignore the 'page number' and use the scroll bar slider as an indicative relative position.

BR

[eschwartz]

Originally Posted by todiwan

I see. I thought that ebook files (mobi, epub, etc.) had clear page separation as physical books, or .pdf files do, and that Calibre was just messing with it and using its own algorithms to come up with a "more useful" number or something. So, that is not the case?

Correct.

ADE uses 2048 characters of text and declares that to be a page.
Kobo I believe has multiple settings, at least one of which shows you how many screenfuls of text there are, which of course changes every time you change the font size.
Kindles just show "location" numbers.

An EPUB or MOBI/AZW3 can come with a Page-map or PageList which corresponds to the pagenumbers from a physical (paper) copy, e.g. Amazon's "Real Page Numbers". Amazon also tells you which ISBN edition it is mapped according to.

Basically the only reason I'm asking this, is because I started using the "goodreads" site, which has a feature that tracks pages. Unless the ebooks I'm reading have the same amount of pages as it says on goodreads (which I assumed would be true by default), I can't use that feature. But it's not a big deal anyway, I'm just trying to make things a bit more convenient for myself.

That is geared towards people who read on paper.

Feel free to guesstimate, or something.
Or buy from Amazon, since Amazon provides page mappings which work with their reader apps/devices.

Is there a way to make it so that the field displays a percentage (which shows when you hover anyway) instead of a "X / Y"?

I don't *think* so. (But I could be wrong.)

Maybe in the upcoming/inprogress calibre v3 rewrite it will get an option.

[Krazykiwi]

On GR: click the "page number" in the status update and it'll change to % which is much easier to guesstimate (it's not like anyone will care if you're a % or two off on GR

Re ebook page numbers on GR: There are specific (and typical for cataloguing in libraries) rules about which pages get counted and which don't (for instance, advertising etc at the end of books are routinely discarded, as are initial roman numeral enumerated numbers.) The actual rules are in the librarian guidelines, but they are essentially the same as Worldcat (which means the same as libraries use). But they are always edition specific, and can change even between reprintings because a tiny typo fix in a later printing caused the entire text to be reflowed and rejustified to add or remove a page - or several, if the first edition was badly copyedited.

JSWolf: the librarians aren't staff, they're volunteers, and if you don't say where you got the page numbers, they won't add them. And because they are edition specific, if you don't specify the exact edition you mean by ISBN, they won't get added.

Acceptable sources for ebook page counts on GR are three: The publisher (if they bother giving one on their website, but this is most often just the paperback page count anyway, and probably the least accurate one), Worldcat (because librarians) and the estimate from the Calibre page count plugin - but that last will only be accepted if you say that's where you got it from and it will be replaced if anyone ever notices one of the first two although that's unlikely to happen.