james said:
>   if I seem a little dense

if you seemed "dense", i wouldn't bother...


>   it's because you reveal what you're doing
>   in bits and pieces, hints, and old email threads

it's a big ocean that i'm boiling here, james...

be patient, and drink one cup of tea at a time.


>   I assumed that the page breaks were going away
>   until I saw your work product
>   where the TOC actually had page numbers
>   and linked to those pages.
>   That made me wonder.

ok, let's use this as a teachable moment.

(it's wonderful that you're a good learner,
since i always end up being pedagogical.)

first of all, nothing in a _work-product_
will necessarily be in the _final_ product.
so that "wonder" shouldn't even come up.

indeed, what you _should_ be thinking is
"why is this aspect in this work-product?"
and "what need is it serving in this case?"

second, and of an enduring importance,
is the fact that _navigation_ is one of the
essential qualities of an electronic-book.

by "navigation", i mean 3 specific things:
1.  knowing where you are in the e-book.
2.  knowing exactly where you want to go.
3.  being able to go there quickly and easily.

pagenumbers help to keep you grounded;
they make it easy to know where you are...

they also often make it easy to know where
you want to go.  they serve as sign-posts...

in the electronic text environment, _links_
are the things that make it easy to _jump_
-- i.e., go somewhere quickly and easily...

so navigation is why we keep pagenumbers
in our "master" file -- because they are _so_
essential in our editing -- and often even in
an output-format created from that master.
(but only if they won't interfere with usage.
still, we keep 'em up until the last moment.)

navigation is crucial in a work-product too.
which is why i included the links in that file.
they are tremendously useful, at times, and
you can just ignore 'em the rest of the time.

another thing that you can note about this
is that pagenumbers help us to formulate
_an_intelligent_file-naming_scheme_to_use.

notice that i use the prefix of "bhaga" on
all of the files associated with this book...
(that's what defines it as a coherent entity
within my system, which has many books;
that 5-letter label also names its _folder_.)

after "bhaga" is "f" or "p", depending on if
it's a forwardmatter page or a regular page
-- i.e., either roman numerals or arabic --
_then_ the pagenumber (padded to 3 digits).

so the scan for page 123 is "bhagap123.jpg".
and the .html filename is "bhagap123.html".
the text filename would be "bhagap123.txt".
and the html anchor is likewise "bhagap123".

this intelligent naming-scheme means that
the book has a dependable predictability, so
it's easy to create .html anchors, and links,
and to call images, and so on...  thus, those
pagenumbers in a p-book table-of-contents
can be _effortlessly_ turned into .html links,
with a minimum of fuss or muss or coding.
it's like falling off a log.  so it's something
that's simultaneously powerful and simple,
great navigability at practically zero cost...

so the question is:  "why _wouldn't_ i do it?"

and the answer:  "i'd be stupid not to do it."

all the links in that huge table-of-contents?
i accomplished them with two lines of code:
the first one created each of the anchors...
the second made the links to those anchors.

and did you catch the results of a third line?

each of the page-separators is a _link_ that
will load the image-scan for that page into
a _named_ window, which also means that
subsequent clicks on other page-separators
load their scan in that same named window.

so if you wanted to refer to the page-image
to resolve any of those paragraph questions,
it would have been extremely easy to do so.

this is a little trick which you and i will use
later, james, so make sure you play with it.

and, again, all of that with one line of code.

so these are great examples of the way that
it can be fun and easy to code books which
are powerful, fast, easy, functional, and fun.

and _that's_ what you should be noticing,
james, not complaining about "these links
which i do not want".  there's all kinds of
gold injected into the samples i give you,
and you should really be panning for it...

not all of the nuggets will be as big and
obvious and easy to explain as these, but
ounce for ounce, they're just as valuable...

***

that's page _numbers_.  page _breaks_ are
another animal.  they are useful less often,
so most of the time we will not retain them.
(but again, we keep 'em as long as we can.)

it's probably also important to note that we
have a way to "rejoin" paragraphs even while
retaining the pagebreaks and pagenumbers.

(for instance, that's important when we do
the check for balanced doublequote-marks,
where the paragraphing exerts an impact.)


>   A design is beginning to emerge
>   from everything you've told me.
>   Looking at your ZML file helped.

good.  glad to hear that.           :+)

you have to also realize that there are
hundreds of subscribers to this listserve,
and you're just a vehicle for this thread,
where i'm actually talking to all of them,
not just to you individually...  so i have to
make sure this is still interesting to them,
even though they've heard the whole story.
(well, at least they _believe_ that they have.)

***

the other thing is, i love life.  i laugh a lot.
i'm always smiling when i write these posts.
i have a good time.  i enjoy the interaction.
so i'm having fun.  even when i pretend to
complain...  (although it does get tiresome
when i must repeat myself too frequently!)

you don't have to fret over offending me...

-bowerbird