There are occasions when pictures of a phone screen are shown in a book - e.g. it might be a book on how to make phone apps or something. In the pictures of the phone screens displayed in this book, this rule would demand that the battery percentage displayed at the top of the screen declines uniformly over the course of the book, proportionate to how far through the book each picture appears. That is all.-- hippo, Oct 11 2020 Bouncing_20Ball_20Page_20Numbers [xenzag, Oct 11 2020] 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. +-- xenzag, Oct 11 2020 What if the illustrations are explaining how to charge the battery ?-- 8th of 7, Oct 11 2020 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.-- hippo, Oct 11 2020 Perfect. [+]-- 8th of 7, Oct 11 2020 //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).-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 11 2020 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.-- 8th of 7, Oct 11 2020 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...)-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 11 2020 // legal & safety carp //
Yes, there's something very fishy about that...-- 8th of 7, Oct 11 2020 It was initially just a typo that I noticed on proof-reading, but I decided it was silly enough to leave as-is...-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 12 2020 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-- pocmloc, Oct 12 2020 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-- pocmloc, Oct 12 2020 //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.//
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.-- bs0u0155, Oct 12 2020 Would the energy source powering the book's LCD have a battery indicator ?
<Opens log file/>
<Locates entry for [bs]/>
<Selects text/>
<Changes "a right clever one who needs to be watched" to Bold, Underlined, Italic, 72-point font/>
<Save changes and close/>-- 8th of 7, Oct 12 2020 //72-point font// Terrible. Only the truly dastardly go beyond 48-point...-- neutrinos_shadow, Oct 12 2020 And "Five exclamation marks, the sure sign of an insane mind" ...
(Pterry Pratchett)-- 8th of 7, Oct 12 2020 Hmm... [pocmloc] and [bs0u0155] make some very valid points. Getting this right may be more complex than I at first thought...-- hippo, Oct 12 2020 ^ [marked-for-tagline]-- 8th of 7, Oct 12 2020 //more complex//
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.-- spidermother, Oct 14 2020 // complex page numbers //
Now there's something to send compositors gibbering to the psych ward...
That's a very interesting concept. Traditional books are - in terms of logical structure - linear and one-dimensional.
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.
The next step might be spherical "page space" where a page is specified by r, theta, phi from the origin.
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...-- 8th of 7, Oct 14 2020 That would only really work for four-dimensional books though.
Might need to order new bookshelves as well, they'd fall out of the 3D ones I have.-- pocmloc, Oct 14 2020 Naturally the sections dealing with AC supply to the charger would have to be on complex-numbered pages, which wouldn't phase me.-- spidermother, Oct 14 2020 //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]-- hippo, Oct 14 2020 It's a clever pun. Now look what you made me do. (Puts down own horn, wipes up spittle).-- spidermother, Oct 14 2020 //Puts down own horn, wipes up spittle//* *[not a euphemism]-- hippo, Oct 14 2020 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'."-- spidermother, Oct 14 2020 - three words I would struggle to disagree with-- hippo, Oct 14 2020 //'Fuck off Morrissey'// Thirded (or Fourthed if you include Mr Bragg).
//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.-- zen_tom, Oct 14 2020 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.-- hippo, Oct 14 2020 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.
This would have the additional advantage of confusing the hell out of non-geeks (always a worthwhile outcome).-- 8th of 7, Oct 14 2020 You could assign each page a randomly generated glyph. The index might prove challenging though, e.g.
... Battery charging.... page '/, Battery indicator.... page }-{ Battery installation... pages ^^ to = ...-- pocmloc, Oct 14 2020 No, it has to be much more systematic than that. Such a method could be defeated by simple visual searching.
It needs to be something algorithmic, yet obscure.-- 8th of 7, Oct 14 2020 //"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.
//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"
< PLOT SPOILER AHEAD >
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.
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...
< PLOT SPOILER FINISHED >
I also think a complex index would be a lovely thing to implement in a pop-up book.-- zen_tom, Oct 14 2020 And entirely appropriate; since the book itself is multi-dimensional, the index should be the same.-- 8th of 7, Oct 14 2020 //By introducing a major plot twist// in a phone user manual? Please elaborate.
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.-- pocmloc, Oct 14 2020 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.-- hippo, Oct 14 2020 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.
This could be throughout the book as [hippo] said, dependent on density of work in the book.-- wjt, Oct 17 2020 // usually I haven't been paying attention. //
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 ?-- 8th of 7, Oct 17 2020 Too true. I hope what I miss is ending up my 4th dimensional extension.-- wjt, Oct 17 2020 One word...I mean one sound...hmmm.-- blissmiss, Oct 18 2020 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.-- wjt, Oct 19 2020 //Charging a phone happens faster than using up the charge on a phone//
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.-- bs0u0155, Oct 19 2020 random, halfbakery