Am 09.12.2011 um 22:26 schrieb James Adcock:
Keith: Not quite! For a PDF this may be true, (often it is off by a page or two)
For HTML and epub ir does not tell where to go, but offers a link. There is quite a bit of semantic and pragmatic difference.
I don’t see it? The difference between “telling” how to get there vs. “pointing” how to get there?
O.K. let's take this slowly so that we are all in the same context.
1) a link is identified by some text that is in one way or the over emphasized
to indicate that it is a link.
2) the text identifing the link will not necessarily contain the location of where to go in the
text. Depending on the software used for display the text one might be give said location.
This may be dependent on the exact syntax used for the link.
3) I have not seen a e-reader that actual shows the location the link is pointing to
Of course, I admit that I do not know many ereaders myself, yet I would assume that
they do not display the true location of the link as this would be a great distraction while
reading.
4) I do not know of an ereader that allows you to enter a link verbatim add jump to that position!
In other words you have no way to manually accessing any particular location in a etext/ebook
5) Etexts/ebooks do not per say have a concept of pages so one can actually flip to a particular page.
More over it is at most dived into "screens of text" and the exact size will vary from device to device
and settings to settings(font, font size, orientation).
So as you can plainly see from the above mentioned that the person that sees a entry in a TOC is not told at
all where to go. At most they only have the information that there exists a major subpart some where in the book.
In other words they have no navigation means of going there as one would with a traditional book of printed matter.
What the do have is a navigational means by clicking/activating the link, whereby they are moved to that pre-defined
position in the etext/ebook without actually truly knowing where it is located. That is in the same file, chapter, section, etc.
So semantically, even if there where a traditional TOC, it does do tell you where to go. Pragmatically, you navigate via
link, and can not move easily to this position as you would using a printed book by thumbing to the position. You could
though, if supported try scrolling to this position, but you have no true means of orientation.
A link does not necessarily tell a user where to go, not does it actually point the user to a location {though a link does actually
point/link to a location), it merely indicates that s/he can go to a different location by clicking it(thereby points out that s/he can jump/link
with necessarily knowing where the location is).
[Please note the use of necessarily, because depending on the software used the user has the ability to see the actual location being pointed/link
to]
Below, you try to advocate that the "should" of NCX does not make it a true TOC for an EPUB. Yet, it the light of other missing navigational means
there is hardly any true easy accessible alternative to it.
Furthermore, you try to differential between the functionality of navigational means and the informational value of a TOC. In a printed book you only
have "the turning of pages" as navigational mean. Yet, as the TOC gives you orientation of where to find that information it is a navigational means to.
I find you distinction(differentiation) between purely informational value and navigational value very constructed, especially in this discussion.
A TOC is most always navigational, in this day and age. I do admit in the past was customary to have books in which the TOC did not have page number
and was, thereby, purely information in nature, and you can find this style used today, yet it is not widespread. Whether, the author of an ebook should add
a TOC on add navigational content to a traditional TOC is irrelevant, as it is a matter or style. According, to the documention the "EPUB TOC"(NCX) is the true
TOC of the EPUB that is easily accessible to the human reader. The NCX is a must have file, and must contain at least one entry(the beginning of the text).
So, in the light of the above and if one wishes to follow traditional book making practices, the "EPUB TOC" has a fix position in the EPUB format, if one wishes
to have a TOC for the ebook. This "EPUB TOC" does not necessarily have to mimic the original TOC of a book being transcirbe, yet for all practical purposes of a TOC of
mentioning the major subparts of a this is where it should go!. Of course, in traditional book making there is no said locational for the TOC, though convention has it that it
is either somewhere in the front of a book or near the end of it.
regards
Keith.
[
Keith:
[
Evidently, you have not read the documentation well enough or you are not recognizing the fact that the "EPUB TOC" does "tell the reader the major subparts of the whole".
Assuming by “EPUB” we mean version 2 since version 3 isn’t out in the market yet, I read, direct from IPDF, explaining their transitioning from version 2 to version 3 quote:
Need for enhanced navigation support. There is currently no ability to represent preferred instantiations of navigational elements; as well, presently any rendering of page-to-page navigation as well as Table of Contents and other navigation elements is optional and entirely Reading System-dependent. Version 2.0.1 makes “end user” presentation of the NCX TOC a “should” with statement that the next version will likely transform to a “must” and that other NCX sections may receive similar “upgraded” treatment.
End-quote.
IE a NCX is NOT a TOC under version 2.0 -- Under version 3.0 they are moving to require the NCX to be a TOC.
Early EPUBs included explicit TOCs until Adobe Digital Editions started supporting NCX “on the side” in a way that appear similar to a TOC, at which point in time EPUBs appeared to include two TOCs in slightly different incompatible ways that looked stupid, so then publishers began to remove the explicit TOCs from their books and started referring to the NCX as if it were the “TOC.” Conversely Kindle retained NCX as in fact a “Navigational Aid” which did not look like at TOC and so instead retained TOCs explicitly in the book where they belong and where they in fact look like a TOC. But then people who naively translated EPUBS to MOBI using Kindlegen would complain that the generated MOBI doesn’t include a TOC – of course not since it never had a TOC, rather it had a NCX navigational aid! The NCX is still in there, it just isn’t implemented “on the side” like Adobe chose to do making it look like a TOC and not like an NCX. Version 3.0 EPUB basically shrugs its shoulders and says “Oh well the Adobe approach has won out by now.”
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