travis said:

Page numbers aren't the only method of marking off measurable sections of text.

no, they certainly aren't. especially with electronic-books, we could invent any number of other methods as well. many people have tried. and have you heard about any of them actually achieving success? no, you haven't, because none of them have...

They just make the most sense when you're dealing with physical materials that are laid out in page form.

well, if we're taking about ink-on-paper books, then pagenumbers won _that_ battle long ago... the only other system with any traction at all is the book/chapter/verse system used in bibles. *** but let me tell you the biggest stickler of all... it's that whatever new system that you invent, it's going to have to work with material that has been printed-out. you can talk about the "search" capability of e-books until you are blue in the face, but that's not going to work, since it won't work once a book is printed out. and you can talk about numbering paragraphs, or sentences, or the letter "e", just to name a few of the suggestions that have been made -- or the "bookmarks" that travis suggests -- but then you're going to have to ensure that everyone agrees on the counting system -- does an ordered list count as "a paragraph"? -- and that your new numbering system gets printed out with every printout that gets made. (with a million nightmares lurking inside that.) oh, yeah, and another "small matter" is that you're going to have to _convert_ all of those pagenumber references in our cultural legacy (you know, the books that were "born physical") into your new system. good luck with _that_... *** so, no, kids, i ain't doing this discussion again. things will play out _exactly_ as i said they will. we will end up with pagenumbers because nothing else will work as well or as reliably, and be robust across the range of conditions. and if you don't even have a _contender_ for a solution, let alone one that has proven itself, then maybe you shouldn't even be in this dialog. ***

stating uncatagorically that

spellcheck says you spelled that word wrong...

stating uncatagorically that it *will* be page numbers is just silly.

you just watch, travis. you'll see that i'm right... and then _you_ will be the one who fills "silly"... -bowerbird