We have touched upon this in other threads, but "total pages in book" calculation is a crucial issue that certainly deserves its own thread, so here it is. :o Ian Mond (many thanks to him) on Facebook:
https://goo.gl/t0d2Ob
alerted me to something I hadn't noticed before: namely, that the "total pages in book" data in Marvin 3 currently is totally bogus. :( It's just a random calculation performed by Marvin, and so is – when it comes to many users' (such as mine) expectations – totally useless, really. I never noticed that this was the case; I thought that the imprecision I was observing was due to the malformatting of the particular EPUB files I'm currently reading.
But no – the same anomaly that Ian talks about can be observed in all e-books in Marvin 3: just open any e-book in Marvin 3 on the iPhone and then on the iPad (even the largest, 13-inch iPad Pro!), and Marvin 3 will insist that the book has the same total number of pages on both devices! :smack: Sorry, Kris, but that's absurd – so absurd, in fact, that I would prefer if Marvin did not even offer us any "total pages in book" data at all, instead of feeding us such fake data. :(
Indeed, if we're going for fake pages, then definitely adopt Jon's ADE-style page numbers suggestion instead. In the world of fake electronic pages, ADE is already somewhat of a standard – why invent another, totally arbitrary Marvin pseudo-standard? :tdown:
The thing I'm interested in, though (and I'm sure many other Marvin users as well), are real pages/screens, which Marvin 3 (and Marvin 2, Marvin 1) does display for chapters. If you can't ensure that the same thing is happening for the "total pages in book" data, Kris, please just forget it and go for ADE instead. :rolleyes:
If you open a very long chapter in Marvin on the iPhone and then on the largest iPad, everything is perfect: the chapter may be 75 pages long on the iPhone, and 30 pages on the iPad. But for the entire book, it doesn't work at all – I have James Thurber's Library of America volume (Writings and Drawings), an official e-book purchase, it's over 1,000 pages in print, but Marvin 3 absurdly tells me that the book is exactly 1030 pages long on all 4 of my devices: iPhone, and the 8-inch, 10-inch, and 13-inch iPads. :( I find that unbearable, Kris – it means that very often, I need to flip several pages on the iPhone in this particular hefty volume, before I see the "total pages left" number go down by even 1. :rolleyes: Conversely, on the huge 13-inch iPad Pro screen, I very often see the page number go down by 2, or 3, or even 4 in some cases, after a single page flip! :eek: So, what's the use of all this? Just implement ADE instead, if they are to be fake pages...
In contrast, when I open Thurber's most famous story in that volume, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", the "pages in chapter" data in Marvin 3 is spot-on:
Marvin 3 evidently knows how to calculate device-specific "pages"/screens precisely – but it only currently does so on a chapter-by-chapter basis. If you worry, Kris, about that calculation being too resource-hungry when being performed for the entire book by default, perhaps it could only be performed on demand – that is, it might possibly only be performed for those users who choose to have "pages in book" (total/left/or both) displayed in their footer.
And as I mentioned in another thread, these 2 options shouldn't be mutually exclusive: a user like Jon would prefer to see ADE-style page numbers in the footer, while I (and I'm sure many other Marvin users) would opt for "real-life page/screen numbers" instead. Hell, because Marvin 3 will soon allow us to customize our headers and footers, some users might even find it useful to display both page-count styles in their footers simultaneously – ADE pages and "real-life/device-specific" pages. Why not? :2thumbsup
https://goo.gl/t0d2Ob
alerted me to something I hadn't noticed before: namely, that the "total pages in book" data in Marvin 3 currently is totally bogus. :( It's just a random calculation performed by Marvin, and so is – when it comes to many users' (such as mine) expectations – totally useless, really. I never noticed that this was the case; I thought that the imprecision I was observing was due to the malformatting of the particular EPUB files I'm currently reading.
But no – the same anomaly that Ian talks about can be observed in all e-books in Marvin 3: just open any e-book in Marvin 3 on the iPhone and then on the iPad (even the largest, 13-inch iPad Pro!), and Marvin 3 will insist that the book has the same total number of pages on both devices! :smack: Sorry, Kris, but that's absurd – so absurd, in fact, that I would prefer if Marvin did not even offer us any "total pages in book" data at all, instead of feeding us such fake data. :(
Indeed, if we're going for fake pages, then definitely adopt Jon's ADE-style page numbers suggestion instead. In the world of fake electronic pages, ADE is already somewhat of a standard – why invent another, totally arbitrary Marvin pseudo-standard? :tdown:
The thing I'm interested in, though (and I'm sure many other Marvin users as well), are real pages/screens, which Marvin 3 (and Marvin 2, Marvin 1) does display for chapters. If you can't ensure that the same thing is happening for the "total pages in book" data, Kris, please just forget it and go for ADE instead. :rolleyes:
If you open a very long chapter in Marvin on the iPhone and then on the largest iPad, everything is perfect: the chapter may be 75 pages long on the iPhone, and 30 pages on the iPad. But for the entire book, it doesn't work at all – I have James Thurber's Library of America volume (Writings and Drawings), an official e-book purchase, it's over 1,000 pages in print, but Marvin 3 absurdly tells me that the book is exactly 1030 pages long on all 4 of my devices: iPhone, and the 8-inch, 10-inch, and 13-inch iPads. :( I find that unbearable, Kris – it means that very often, I need to flip several pages on the iPhone in this particular hefty volume, before I see the "total pages left" number go down by even 1. :rolleyes: Conversely, on the huge 13-inch iPad Pro screen, I very often see the page number go down by 2, or 3, or even 4 in some cases, after a single page flip! :eek: So, what's the use of all this? Just implement ADE instead, if they are to be fake pages...
In contrast, when I open Thurber's most famous story in that volume, "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty", the "pages in chapter" data in Marvin 3 is spot-on:
- 9 pages on the iPhone
- 6 pages on the 8-inch iPad
- 5 pages on the 10-inch iPad
- 3 pages on the 13-inch iPad
Marvin 3 evidently knows how to calculate device-specific "pages"/screens precisely – but it only currently does so on a chapter-by-chapter basis. If you worry, Kris, about that calculation being too resource-hungry when being performed for the entire book by default, perhaps it could only be performed on demand – that is, it might possibly only be performed for those users who choose to have "pages in book" (total/left/or both) displayed in their footer.
And as I mentioned in another thread, these 2 options shouldn't be mutually exclusive: a user like Jon would prefer to see ADE-style page numbers in the footer, while I (and I'm sure many other Marvin users) would opt for "real-life page/screen numbers" instead. Hell, because Marvin 3 will soon allow us to customize our headers and footers, some users might even find it useful to display both page-count styles in their footers simultaneously – ADE pages and "real-life/device-specific" pages. Why not? :2thumbsup