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> We both basically came to the conclusion that the only e-books that work are prose-oriented, not learning-oriented. Completely agreed. E-books are great for
by Osmium 12y ago
> We both basically came to the conclusion that the only e-books that work are prose-oriented, not learning-oriented.
Completely agreed. E-books are great for linear text, but the moment you have any kind of cross-referencing it falls apart (even footnotes are troublesome; why can't footnotes be display inline?) Most importantly, they lack discovery; it's a lot harder to flip to a random page.
That said, I have started reading a programming Apple iBooks textbook [1] and I find the format great because it's interactive and because [edit: in principle...] you can copy and paste code snippets directly. In this sense, I think it's actually a lot better than its paper counterpart–but perhaps coding books are a niche (and, I'm sure, some would argue that having to re-type code yourself is a worthwhile exercise in its own right).
[1] http://scenekitbook.com http://scenekitbook.com
- ochoseis 12y agoI do need to try an iBook, but I think good old fashioned web pages work great for reference material [1], especially if you can combine it with something like Diigo [2] for note-taking. Can't beat the book-markability and searchability of the web. What I wonder is if something like a Surface Pro is good enough for pen-written notes, because if I were in school again I'd probably just use that for everything. [1] Consider the SVN book: http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/index.html http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.7/index.html [2] https://www.diigo.com https://www.diigo.com