Finally, real page numbers for the Kindle | Hacker News Reader

Finally, real page numbers for the Kindle

kindlepost.com

15 pointsapress11 comments

On the one hand, I agree with the commenters on that post that it's too early to be cutting off updates for the Kindle 2 and DX, if that is indeed what is happening.

On the other hand, I think this issue is almost exclusively principle-of-the-matter for said commenters, as I highly doubt many of them will have any real use for "real" page numbers. I can imagine it being occasionally useful with reference material, but nobody's Dan Brown reading marathon is going to be ruined without it.

I especially look forward to someone being mad because a book's page numbers don't match the particular printing that person has. What page numbers are canonical? Hardcover, 1st edition?

The joy of ebooks is that the page number set you choose can be configured. Have a friend with the Hardcover Second Edition? Click that one.

Is that what they're doing, though? It would be fantastic if they were, but I'm slightly sceptical...

I thought about that, but saw no indication that that's what they have planned.

And even if that's the case, I'm quite skeptical that they'll keep up with future printings of every book they do. And what about classics that have an army of printed editions already? Are they really going to map out every single one and present users with a mile-long menu to choose from?

The mental image of Amazon interns surrounded by mountains of paperbacks, painstakingly entering page delimitations into the system, amuses me greatly.

I'm actually kind of excited for real page numbers, and not because I want to cross-reference with paper books. It's easier for me to remember something like "there was an interesting idea on page 165" instead of "there was an interesting idea between locations 7434-7470".

(Granted I could use Kindle's bookmarking or some other on-device method, but I still find the Kindle's interface clunky and often would rather just make a mental note.)

I find locations difficult to deal with because I don't know what constitutes a "location." Is it a sentence? A line? A group of five words? These things I can understand, and they can help me understand the work I'm reading. I know how long it takes me to read 30 pages of reference material, or 30 pages in a trade paperback. I don't know how long it takes me to read 30 locations.

Heck, I don't even know how much material is in 30 locations.

From what I can tell, a 'location' is a block-level tag within the document html... <p>, <h2>, etc. Not that that's a helpful representation in any conceivable way for documents longer than a few paragraphs.

The nice thing about page numbers would be the ability to discuss things with people reading the same book in paper format (think of using it in a class for example. "On pg 3, John said...")

I would really like to see the feature to convert any texts or pdfs into Kindle format. The converters I have tried so far are terrible with pdf books.

The only thing I could want, in addition to what the Kindle already has, is nested collections. I guess I'll have to wait a bit longer for those.

Does anyone know if the numbering is only for Kindle-purchased books or also extends to .mobi or other DRM-free formats the Kindle supports?

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