>>Here too you are assuming that other people use the
>>same tools that you use. A good tool is one that adapts >>itself to an
>>unknown situation, and does not make assumptions. >>Discarding page
>>numbers in reference works makes assumptions on >>other people's working
>methods; the result is a less flexible tool.

I didn't assume. I asked. Some ISPs carry formatting over and some don't. I have no idea what ISP someone I don't know is using or what that ISP might do with formatting.

 

A good tool is one that can be used for at least 50 things besides the one it is designed for. You can use two bricks to kill a fly, if you can figure out how to make the fly stay on the bottom brick long enough for you to clap the top brick on top of it. You can use bricks and boards to make a bookcase. You can make a street out of bricks. Go away and think of 47 other uses for bricks. Then talk to me about tools.

 

I am not recommending discarding page numbers in reference books. I am suggesting that the majority of books already posted do not necessitate going back and redoing to insert the page numbers.

 

It's like those old Tom Swift books I was recently accused of reading in preference to anything else: if I want to do a learned paper or book on the Stratemeyer syndicate--I think but am not sure, and it is not necessary for anybody to inform me, that it included Tom Swift; I know it included Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys--I will have to go somewhere that I can use the tree book versions, and even then I'll have to be careful, because I know that Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys were rewritten umpteen times, often with no more than the title saved from edition to edition and no indication in the front matter as to what version this one was.

 

But do enough people want to write learned papers on Tom Swift, or Tarzan, or Elsie Dinsmore, or The Wizard of Oz, for it to be reasonable for me to demand that all the Tom Swift, Tarzan, Elsie Dinsmore, and Wizard of Oz  books to be pulled down until somebody has time to rescan them and keep all the page numbers this time?

 

I don't think so.

 

By the way, since so many people seem to know better than I do what I'm reading at present, I'll save them the trouble of guessing. I have finally laid my hands on a copy of Isabella Beeton's 1865 book on household management--University of Adelaide has posted it--and I'm reading it because I think that it is appropriate Sabbath Day reading, and yes I know different religions have different "Sabbath Days" but I'm referring to my own religion's. (I specify this because I was once head of a very small--three person--department which happened to include a Muslim, a Christian, and a fellow who wasn't interested in religion. So I set schedules up so that I was always off Sunday, which I wanted, and Saki was always off Saturday, which he wanted, and Pat was always off in the middle of the week, which he wanted. So my boss's boss turned it all around so that none of us had the days off we wanted, because I could not get it through his head that we were all happy with the schedule I had arranged.) I stopped reading the book long enough to send a message to my brothers inquiring how to slice a garfish and how many axes would be necessary. Mrs. Beeton gives instructions for how to cook the garfish but she begins by saying that it is necessary to begin by slicing the garfish. Last time (okay, the only time) I ever saw a garfish, one of my brothers tried to behead it and broke an axe.

 

By the way, Mrs. Beeton does not number pages. She numbers recipes. So her table of contents and her index get a reader to the right place no matter what form the text is in. Three cheers for Mrs. Beeton!

 

The previous book was Pamela; the next ones will be A. Merritt's The Moon Pool and The Metal Monster. I'm perfectly furious that one of the A. Merritt books I've been seeking has turned up on FictionWise and I have to PAY for it and I don't have the money.

 

Shall I report on what books I read after The Metal Monster? Actually I was kind of thinking about calling a whole lot of state capitals and explaining that we need to redo our registrations and asking how I need to go about doing it, but if it's necessary for me to give book reports I can do that instead. Also I'm sort of busy reading ancient Egyptian medical books in preparation for a novel I'm writing that includes Luke the Physician, but I couldn't get them online because the English versions are still in copyright and I can't read hieroglyphics, which doesn't matter because they aren't on line in hieroglyphics  either, so I had to get them through ILL.

 

What have I ever done to you to make you want to bite my head off every time I post? I can't help being autistic. I was born autistic. You can help being a walking, talking, grouch box.

 

Anne