Meeting minutes
<wendyreid> date: 2021-09-29
wendyreid: Asked her UX team about locators
… They did focus on UI, but they also found many use cases, problems, and questions
… Wanted to present this as different "modes" so the user could choose a paging mode they prefer
… They had: "Screens", "Pages" (synced to published), "something not called Calculated Pages" (calculated pages)
… One possible name was "Epub Standard Paging"
… There are reading and sharing use cases
… Need a good way of explaining the current mode to users
… Could the digital epub page numbers be more consistent than print books?
… That is, print edition really needs accurate edition references to be useful
Dan: We need to make it clear that publishers should include page lists
… Epub can insert pages in a way that paper books can't (eg pages 1, 2, 3, 3a, 4)
wendyreid: [shows some art]
Dan: I thought we decided that publisher and automated pages would be the same
<wendyreid> duga:
<wendyreid> duga: We don't do screens, the user has no idea that they're different, it's either publisher pages or calculated ones
<wendyreid> ... no idea of a generated page vs a publisher page
<wendyreid> ... just a page number
<wendyreid> ... they just want to know their location
<wendyreid> Mary: Just fiction?
<wendyreid> duga: Mainly fiction
<wendyreid> ... reading of a book by an individual, not a lot of book clubs, single user cover to cover
<wendyreid> Mary: Linear reading
<wendyreid> ... I'm used to users who are academics/students
<wendyreid> duga: Mostly when we have that, usually they are looking at religious texts, with more concrete ways to reference
<wendyreid> ... if a publisher provided page numbers, we display them
<wendyreid> ... you wouldn't know the edition
<wendyreid> ... scary world of "which edition"
<wendyreid> ... I could see a use case for that
<wendyreid> ... looking for a page for an edition
<wendyreid> dlazin: I liked the UX proposal about the different modes
<wendyreid> duga: Different editions might have differing pages, but with calculated page numbers, similar benefit to pagelist
<wendyreid> dlazin: the pagelist becomes the predominant method
<wendyreid> ... we're really talking about avoiding the algorithm
<wendyreid> ... when you have different editions, with minor changes
<wendyreid> duga: It's tricky if the page list mimics a print version
<wendyreid> ... if you want to have a more robust system for citation
<wendyreid> ... you'd need those multiple pagelists
<wendyreid> Mary: Students will look for ebook versions, then print them out, or find the print copy
<wendyreid> ... it might not be many, but it's possible for people wanting to use parallel
wendyreid: We have two views
… We have the "now" problem (switching between print and digital)
… But we also have the dream version, with some pure digital people living in a world with pure print people
… We don't have many books with page lists
… We don't support them, so we don't get them :(
… So we use screens everywhere
… Print page numbers are used sometimes and users are confused by them
Ronnie: What does the text in an index say?
wendyreid: Whatever the author/publisher put there!
Ronnie: Talked to a publisher that said there would be no index in the e version
BenSchroeter: Thinking about the complexity of modes, kind of prefer a single page number presented to the user
… Feels like modes at too much complexity
wendyreid: Looked at citation guidelines, it is already a practice to reference the type of book referenced
Mary: They are moving away from that
BenSchroeter: And the standardization scheme makes that unneeded
duga: We will probably just continue to pick either authored or generated, but might provide what the source is for users that need to cite
wendyreid: There are two types of users, those that really care (eg anyone that needs to cite a reference) and everyday readers
Mary: Many universities are e first, but not epub (often PDF)
Dan: Only read things that are easy to read cover to cover, because jumping around is painful
… Will things change or is that just the way ebooks will be used
wendyreid: This goes beyond what we can spec
… Talked with this with some other people, it's really hard to navigate so no one does
… everything is geared to fiction cover to cover reading
wendyreid: Do we need to make this as good as print?
Mary: Why not do better than print?
wendyreid: we had another affordance for showing page numbers in search
<wendyreid> duga: It's fun to modify the book with page numbers, but hard
<wendyreid> Mary: Maybe it can be something else
<wendyreid> duga: With an author-provided page number, it's easier
<wendyreid> ... the information is clear
wendyreid: Do we want a section on possible affordances?
… This gives authors and reading systems an idea of why page lists are useful
… Next meeting on the 15th of Oct
<wendyreid> ... zakim, end meeting