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I'm in favour of animated page indicators and once
posted an idea to this effect. It wasn't popular for
some reason. I still think it's quite good but of
course I would. + |
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What if the illustrations are explaining how to charge the battery ? |
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An codicil to the rule stipulates that during the
portion of the text that deals with battery
charging, the battery percentage shown on
illustrations is allowed to increase from one
illustration to the next. To preserve the inverse
relationship between battery percentage in
illustrations and page numbers, within this portion
of the book page numbers will decrease page by
page. |
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//page numbers will decrease page by page//
Umm, this will give you multiple instances of the same page
number; which will break any "contents" or "index" system.
Perhaps have "Battery Charging" as a separate appendix at
the end (after all, you charge the battery when it's getting
low, as it will be at the end of the manual). |
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That won't work. Inspection of an unrepresentatively small sample of mobile phone handset manuals (i.e. two) clearly shows that after the usual legal guff and disclaimers and helpful safety advice such as "Do not insert the handset into body cavities", the first sections are devoted to installing the SIM and battery, and connecting the charger. |
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Yes, but that is in existing manuals. This idea is for "new &
improved" manuals.
(Aside: they put so much legal & safety carp at the
beginning that there isn't even a picture of the phone (let
alone a pic with labels) until about page 57...) |
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// legal & safety carp // |
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Yes, there's something very fishy about that... |
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It was initially just a typo that I noticed on proof-reading,
but I decided it was silly enough to leave as-is... |
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There could be a light sensor inside the book so that once it was opened it could make the tiny printed LCD battery signs start to shrink in real time. Closing the book would cover the light sensor and reset the countdown |
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Or the battery indicator on each picture could be a cut out, with a slider mounted behind the page, so the reader could pull or push the protruding tab for each picture to make it match their phone exactlg |
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//There could be a light sensor inside the book so that once
it was opened it could make the tiny printed LCD battery
signs start to shrink in real time.// |
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Ha! Great! Although electronics not needed. There are
reversible photochromic pigments. It wouldn't be hard to
create ~5 battery bars printed in 5 pigments with decreasing
light sensitivity going right to left. Open the book and the
one on the right starts to disappear. |
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Would the energy source powering the book's LCD have a battery indicator ? |
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<Locates entry for [bs]/> |
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<Changes "a right clever one who needs to be watched" to Bold, Underlined, Italic, 72-point font/> |
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<Save changes and close/> |
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//72-point font//
Terrible. Only the truly dastardly go beyond 48-point... |
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And "Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind" ... |
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Hmm... [pocmloc] and [bs0u0155] make some very
valid points.
Getting this right may be more complex than I at
first thought... |
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Just what I was thinking. The problem of //multiple instances of the same page number//, for example, could be solved by allowing negative, fractional, and complex page numbers. |
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// complex page numbers // |
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Now there's something to send compositors gibbering to the psych ward... |
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That's a very interesting concept. Traditional books are - in terms of logical structure - linear and one-dimensional. |
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The conceptual leap directly from the one-dimensional format to the use of complex numbers, completely bypassing the boring, commonplace x,y or x,y,z notations is intriguing. |
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The next step might be spherical "page space" where a page is specified by r, theta, phi from the origin. |
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Terry Pratchett would have loved this idea. It might even have given a. 303 bookworm indigestion; it certainly fits in with the concept of L-space... |
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That would only really work for four-dimensional books though. |
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Might need to order new bookshelves as well, they'd fall out of the 3D ones I have. |
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Naturally the sections dealing with AC supply to the charger would have to be on complex-numbered pages, which wouldn't phase me. |
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//which wouldn't phase me// - clever*
//The next step might be spherical "page space"
where a page is specified by r, theta, phi from the
origin.// I was thinking about this as similar to a
concept such as altitude. Altitude is a
one-dimensional measure, like page numbers.
However, while page numbers have for too long been
locked in the rigid, boring rule that they should
only linearly increment throughout the pages of the
book, as you progress across a mountain range
altitude will both increase and decrease.
Perhaps
what we need is several page numbers printed on
each page - so there would be the physical page
number (much like page numbers in books currently),
the conceptual page number (which would, for books
about mobile phones, decrement page-by-page in
portions of the book which deal with battery
charging), the leaf number (which would number not
the pages but the folded 'leaves' which make up the
pages, each leaf making 4 'pages'), the series page
number (which, if you're reading a book from a
series of books, shows the total page number within
the entire series), and so on.
*[unless you
actually meant 'phase' and it's not a clever pun on
'faze' and single-phase/three-phase electrical
power systems] |
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It's a clever pun. Now look what you made me do. (Puts down own horn, wipes up spittle). |
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//Puts down own horn, wipes up spittle//*
*[not a euphemism] |
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Quite. Wildly off topic, Billy Bragg introduced one of his songs with "Someone once asked me why there are so many masturbatory references in my songs, so I said 'Fuck off Morrissey'." |
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- three words I would struggle to disagree with |
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//'Fuck off Morrissey'// Thirded (or Fourthed if
you include Mr Bragg). |
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//as you progress across a mountain range altitude
will both increase and decrease// this concept
might be
analogous to a
pages' relative position to some indexed reference
- So say in a book, there's a referenceable "good
bit", then
each page
might be numbered in terms of its location relative
to this - like an index, but live, or "streamed"
rather
than collected in
a batch object at the back. Multiple of these
labeled relative positions might be printed along
the outer edge
of the page,
counting up or down to bits that are going to
happen, or not quite happened yet, making for a
positional "topic
vector"
describing, if reduced to the sum of squares of all
these values, an inverse metric describing
relatively how
much "action"
the specific page is close to. If the reader were
to flip forward to the page containing the book's
minimal
value for this
metric, they'd find themselves at what might be (at least, geometrically) the
most exciting (or topically representative) part of the book. |
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I love the idea of a 'topic vector' indicator to
show proximity to important bits. Also, if a
significant event, around which the plot
turned, was labelled "Q", for example, would you
envisage page numbers reading "Q-5", "Q-4", "Q-3",
"Q-2", and "Q-1" leading up to this page? This
would
create a lovely feeling of anticipation in the
reader.
This device could also be used
another
way. By introducing a major plot twist without this
anticipatory countdown you would increase the
reader's level of surprise. |
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It is clear from the preceding discussion that the existing linear, sequential system of page numbering is entirely inadequate and much more innovative approaches are required. |
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This would have the additional advantage of confusing the hell out of non-geeks (always a worthwhile outcome). |
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You could assign each page a randomly generated glyph. The index might prove challenging though, e.g. |
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...
Battery charging.... page '/,
Battery indicator.... page }-{
Battery installation... pages ^^ to =
... |
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No, it has to be much more systematic than that. Such a method could be defeated by simple visual searching. |
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It needs to be something algorithmic, yet obscure. |
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//"Q-5", "Q-4", "Q-3", "Q-2", and "Q-1"// this could be a neat typographical feature of a novel - where something
really momentous occurs on Q-0. |
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//without this anticipatory countdown you would increase the reader's level of surprise// Which reminds me of
something I suspect is a feature of the wonderful "Gödel, Escher Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid" |
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wherein somewhere is mentioned the idea that a person can infer what the plot might be doing as they approach the end
of a physical book (since they have evidence as to where the end is) but which does something rather clever itself
by signalling an alternative way a conscious intelligence might infer such an ending, communicated on the meta-
level, in the physical absence of a physical one. And then (if I didn't imagine, or completely fantasise this)
implements just such a scheme about halfway in. The effect for me, on realising I was being communicated to directly by another conscious
intelligence (the book helps answer that tricky questions "What is consciousness?" and "How can I be sure that I'm not the only one?") in
a moving and profound way. |
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I'm still yet to find anyone who can corroborate this theory, it's a deep and thoughtful read, and I've not found
the time to verify my suspicions to any degree of satisfaction, nor felt comfortable enough in revealing what
might be, after-all a figment of a fertile/borderline problematic imagination, without possibly at least, giving
away the surprise plot-twist that would have been there if someone hadn't just spoiled it... |
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< PLOT SPOILER FINISHED > |
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I also think a complex index would be a lovely thing to implement in a pop-up book. |
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And entirely appropriate; since the book itself is multi-dimensional, the index should be the same. |
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//By introducing a major plot twist// in a phone user manual? Please elaborate. |
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PocmlFone T54x
User Guide
Introduction
Fingers fumble, probing and grasping until the packaging revealed the hidden reward - a brand new T54x phone. Breathless with anticipation, and buoyed by the confidence that the sleek enigmatic device complied fully with FCC part IIb and IVc, he looked under the card packaging slip for the charging cable.
"Wait", and so he waited, but the next word never came.
The thing about life in the city was the absence of starlight, he thought to himself. The distant galaxies called to him when he was a child, staring through the small window in the attic of his uncle's barn, on those many and long summer breaks when his parents were - as they always claimed - away working on the ships. He was never entirely sure what the ships were. In his childhoood imagination they were mighty tea clippers, or maybe battered pirate frigates, but as he grew older and more cynical his mind wavered between the ferry to the other side of the inlet, or that the "ships" were code for something altogether more intriguing, or perhaps more mundane.
His mind flitted back to the new T54x held limply in his hand. Yes, he had to insert the battery (see page 44).
&ce. |
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Charging a phone happens faster than using up the
charge on a phone so in the portion of the book
which deals with charging, where the page numbers
decrement, they should decrement on each page by an
amount greater than 1. If we choose an irrational
number, like Pi, for the amount by which page
numbers
decrement (and keep the normal bits of the book
with
page numbers incrementing by 1), then the book will
never have page numbers duplicated between the
'battery charging' sections and the rest. |
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Wouldn't the page turn be blank or a page with a shutdown symbol then a few blank pages, some charging symbol pages and finally the page before the first blank? For me , usually I haven't been paying attention. |
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This could be throughout the book as [hippo] said, dependent on density of work in the book. |
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// usually I haven't been paying attention. // |
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Sorry, could you just clarify- are you talking about the idea, or- as seems more likely- neatly summarizing your entire life story up to the present moment ? |
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Too true. I hope what I miss is ending up my 4th dimensional extension. |
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One word...I mean one sound...hmmm. |
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Scientists think they have proof of the 4th dimension. Presumably as a creature of the universe I two would have a 4D body of which I could only see and manipulate my 3D form. Since I miss a lot, that unseen part must be overweight. |
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//Charging a phone happens faster than using up the charge
on a phone// |
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In most cases, I was left wandering rural NY state one night
looking for a campsite since it turned out my HTC one
consumed more than USB could supply while using GPS. The
next model did the same thing. Even my current phone
races through it's three-day battery on GPS. I'm not sure why
that in particular is so battery-hungry. |
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