3 ms·

As much as I like paper books in theory (I have an entire room in my house dedicated to being a library), I found I haven't actually really read one in a few ye

by bane 11y ago

As much as I like paper books in theory (I have an entire room in my house dedicated to being a library), I found I haven't actually really read one in a few years. Kindles, Tablets and the like are more convenient for linear reading (novels, etc.). For my last couple vacations, where I do lots of reading, I just brought my tablet and kindle along, where I would have brought a couple of books in the past. Bonus, they do other things that books don't do. Downside is all the obvious, needs batteries, charging, etc. However, for non-linear reading (e.g. reference books), paper books can't be beat yet. But funny thing, I bought some reference books for one of my teams recently and had to teach a couple of them how to use an index because they had only learned to ctrl+f to find things. I'll admit that well organized hypertext reference guides work almost as well as a reference book, but you consume screen space trying to display the information while an open book on your desk automatically provides that "screen" space. On the flip side, I can start reading a book on my tablet, move to my computer and then my phone all in the same day and modern reading apps keep everything synced pretty well. I feel sad sometimes because my physical library hasn't grown much, but then I remember that I've read many times the number of books on my digital devices because they're so convenient. I don't like e-reader software and the way the information is displayed. I've found that the full-page image scans of books is more beautiful in many cases and works wonderfully on modern tablets with high resolution displays. There's an entire library of these scans over at archive.org for those interested, in many genres.

rpgmaker 11y ago
> But funny thing, I bought some reference books for one of my teams recently and had to teach a couple of them how to use an index because they had only learned to ctrl+f to find things. That's unsettling. Were they college educated? I assume that they are but I can't fathom how you can get a college degree and not know how to use an index. For reference books I find myself preferring PDFs because of the fixed layout.
- bane 11y ago
  > That's unsettling. Were they college educated? Right out of. I had to give the "back in my day" speech making me feel impossibly old. I think it's a function of both plowing through textbooks and then just googling for information when you need to find something again. It wasn't so much that they didn't know how to use an index, just that they hadn't done it since probably middle school or earlier and had simply forgotten what those 30-40 pages in the backs of reference books were for.
CWuestefeld 11y ago
My experience is much like yours: linear reading is much superior on an e-device. But for technical stuff, I haven't found a reader device that gives me a good substitute for having multiple books open on my desk, with marked pages so I can flip between multiple locations. One other thing that bugs me about e-readers is that they intentionally carry all the disadvantages of chopping text into discrete pages, when there's no reason at all to do so. In particular, it bugs me that, at the bottom of a page, I've got to memorize the context before flipping to the next. As I say it, it seems more jarring than it is, but even so, it's forcing a discontinuity that can interrupt the flow. I just can't fathom why they don't do something to avoid that jump. Back in the early days of e-readers, I used software called "iSilo" on Palm and later PocketPC. This allowed me to configure it such that scrolling was in chunks of half a page. With this I could find any convenient spot (a paragraph or at least sentence break) on the lower half of the page, and choose to flip there. My previous "cursor" point would shift half way up the screen, and I could continue fluidly from there. I really wish Kindle allowed this.
- bane 11y ago
  I keep feeling like e-book readers need a "grab a bunch of a pages and flip them all" gesture along with the single page flip. When I flip a chunk of pages in a physical book all at once, I slide my index finger down some percentage of the remaining pages and just flip that entire section of book. Some kind of reasonable and intuitive two-finger equivalent seems like it would help with making e-books work better on digital devices.

by bane 11y ago

rpgmaker 11y ago

> But funny thing, I bought some reference books for one of my teams recently and had to teach a couple of them how to use an index because they had only learned to ctrl+f to find things. That's unsettling. Were they college educated? I assume that they are but I can't fathom how you can get a college degree and not know how to use an index. For reference books I find myself preferring PDFs because of the fixed layout.

bane 11y ago
> That's unsettling. Were they college educated? Right out of. I had to give the "back in my day" speech making me feel impossibly old. I think it's a function of both plowing through textbooks and then just googling for information when you need to find something again. It wasn't so much that they didn't know how to use an index, just that they hadn't done it since probably middle school or earlier and had simply forgotten what those 30-40 pages in the backs of reference books were for.

CWuestefeld 11y ago

My experience is much like yours: linear reading is much superior on an e-device. But for technical stuff, I haven't found a reader device that gives me a good substitute for having multiple books open on my desk, with marked pages so I can flip between multiple locations. One other thing that bugs me about e-readers is that they intentionally carry all the disadvantages of chopping text into discrete pages, when there's no reason at all to do so. In particular, it bugs me that, at the bottom of a page, I've got to memorize the context before flipping to the next. As I say it, it seems more jarring than it is, but even so, it's forcing a discontinuity that can interrupt the flow. I just can't fathom why they don't do something to avoid that jump. Back in the early days of e-readers, I used software called "iSilo" on Palm and later PocketPC. This allowed me to configure it such that scrolling was in chunks of half a page. With this I could find any convenient spot (a paragraph or at least sentence break) on the lower half of the page, and choose to flip there. My previous "cursor" point would shift half way up the screen, and I could continue fluidly from there. I really wish Kindle allowed this.

bane 11y ago
I keep feeling like e-book readers need a "grab a bunch of a pages and flip them all" gesture along with the single page flip. When I flip a chunk of pages in a physical book all at once, I slide my index finger down some percentage of the remaining pages and just flip that entire section of book. Some kind of reasonable and intuitive two-finger equivalent seems like it would help with making e-books work better on digital devices.