Comment by jpcom 6 months ago
Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand. Textbooks are basically reference books, my favorite dictionaries I start to "learn by hand" to know where to flip to approximately to start my search.
For a current project, I've been using a physical book as a reference manual for the API I'm working with rather than using the more typical internet search for the function name. And it's actually somewhat surprising how efficient a physical book is!
Sure, there's a lot of efficiency to Ctrl-F a text string and just find all the places in a document. I won't deny that it takes me longer to pull up the index, search for the function name in the index, then flip to the page. But then I can just leave the book open at that page on the desk (or my lap). I never have to Alt-Tab, or fiddle with the location of windows to switch between looking at documentation and looking at the code I'm working on.
This difference was more stark when I was trying to close-read a different specification to ensure that I understood it well enough to make sure a PR implemented it correctly. I needed to have three different parts of the specification open simultaneously to bounce between all of them. With physical paper, that's just a swish of a hand away. With a PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll down to the piece I wanted, now goto the first section again and scroll down again and wait what was that back thing again goto and scroll and scroll and goto and descent into insanity. Trying to use multiple windows ameliorates the problem somewhat, but it also takes an inordinate amount of time to set the view up correctly, and I often end up running into the "focus doesn't follow the eye gaze" problem of typing in the wrong window and ruining the view.
>With a PDF reader, well, goto that other section, scroll down to the piece I wanted, now goto the first section again and scroll down again and wait what was that back thing again goto and scroll and scroll and goto and descent into insanity.
I pretty much just use screenshots in snagit for that stuff.
A decent index solves that just fine. And usually outpaces ctrl-f chasing for a given word, because it's indexing by ideas, not words. (If it's a decent index, that is :)
That not how indices work. It is by person or subject not "idea". You can do the same thing but better with a "ctrl-f" search.
Good indices are built atop a taxonomy that is then used extensively to list related taxonomic terms. This will give you direct hierarchical terms (loosely maps to what I guess you refer to as by subject) but also related terms. A good indexer will also exercise judgement and check with the author if certain terms are related and in what way.
Let me give you an example of a high-quality index entry from the Software Architecture in Practice (Bass et al. 2021) [1]:
Availability
analytic model space, 259
analyzing, 255–259
broker pattern, 240
calculations, 259
CAP theorem, 523
CIA approach, 147
cloud, 521
design checklist, 96–98
detect faults tactic, 87–91
general scenario, 85–86
introduction, 79–81
planning for failure, 82–85
prevent faults tactic, 94–95
recover-from-faults tactics, 91–94
summary, 98–99
tactics overview, 87
As you see, it lists a number of taxonomic terms that are merely related to each other and you might not think about Ctrl+F-ing for them unless you already want to search for them. You may come to this entry knowing about CAP and navigate away to analytic model space, 259.
[1]: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14786083-software-archit...
Not really. An index is also a list of ideas you should search for. Search for a synonym and control-f fails, but the index will have a "see also" for that, or worst case lets you scan for interesting words without reading the whole book. The index will also leave out all the places where a word happens to be used but are not useful to someone searching for the term.
Of course a good index is hard (read expensive) to write and so many books didn't have good indexes.
If, and that's one huge if, the PDF is structured so that you can do that.
Some are. Far, far, far, far, far too many aren't.
The half-assedry of PDF creation is a major frustration.
It is quite disheartening to see a comment about book indexes being downvoted. In professional publishing houses, indexing is a job done by a qualified indexer and is not as trivial as one may think [1]. Some rather important reading guides [2] recommend to judge a book by its Contents and Index, which are often overlooked in books that were not edited by professionals or were edited in haste.
Not quite. Not a big fan of analogies of questionable fit, but let's try:
It is quite disheartening to see a comment about importance of horse shoes being downvoted. In professional blacksmith shops, horse shoeing is a job done by a qualified farrier and not as trivial as one may think. The importance of horseshoeing for horse wellbeing is also highlighted in certain key equestrian literature.
On the one hand, yes, I agree. There's something about the tactility of a book, about dogeared pages, and marginalia, and having muscle memory to open a book at about the same spot where I left off.
I grew up with that and it's a very comfortable skill set.
On the other hand, I've learned ways to manage and reference information in digital formats. Bookmarks and links and pasted snippets. Attachments and full text search. Not to even get into real sicko stuff like Notion and Obsidian and DEVONthink.
Being able to easily flip back and forth between pages is a very useful technique, but so is being able to snap a screenshot of a pdf and keep it open it in another window.
I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all of these things are irreplaceable
>I'm a sucker for paper but I'm resistant to the idea that all of these things are irreplaceable
This, I'm really comfortable with technology, but I feel like a boomer when I watch kids that have grown up with it their entire lives. Some people don't need the ability to cross reference things much, but folks who do develop the skills the need without having to revert to printed material.
My high school was mainly textbooks, then things were more digital in college. Normally I'm against fancy new tech, but this felt like an improvement in hindsight. I was never missing the book I needed, there's cmd+f and page skip, I can annotate without ruining it...
The real problem seems to be licensing. Lots of books are physical-only, and the digital versions are those annoying "epub" files instead of PDFs.
Yes and no.
PDF's work well for a sufficiently large e-book reader. Full-sized isn't essential, though I find the 13.3" display I use is quite pleasant to read --- roughly equivalent to a large iMac Retina display for reading ease (less overall real estate, but more comfortable to hold in one's hands, and of course, read under bright light / direct sunlight), and vastly superior to a typical smartphone.
Smaller displays of 8--10" should work in most cases and are far more affordable. The exceptions are typically scans from print, especially of small-font and tightly-rendered journal articles, or works with extensive graphics and diagrams. Those with young eyes can probably manage better than the olds.
ePub fits any sized display, but there are times when fixed layout truly is preferable for reading, context, understanding, and juxtaposition of text and graphics, etc. With a fixed layout and a competent layout engine or editor this can be optimised. With a flexible layout* (HTML, ePub, etc.) the dynamic element pretty much always leads to compromises or gaffes in layout and positioning.
Fixed-layout also means that spatial memory of where within a document, chapter, and/or page specific elements / contents are. Dynamic layout greatly reduces the ability of those who have strong spatial memory of written materials.
My understanding is that MS Word's layout (as with some other word-processing software) was strongly dependent on the print drivers installed. So there still was some variability in output.
I tend to prefer LaTeX or a similar doc-prep system myself for authoring.
>Physical books are still better than e-readers because you can put sticky notes on the pages, jump back and forth between pages quickly, and even start to know where pages are simply based on how many leaves/pages are split between your left and right hand.
Only because you prefer to work that way, someone that has grown up with everything digital has equivalent skills doing that stuff using tabs, digital sticky notes, bookmarks, and such.
Many of the beneficial affordances you mention that are available for print but not in ebooks is partly because ebook technology is kind of bad. Navigation and annotation for example could be much better in ebooks if developers put more care into those ergonomics.
The same is true for my students (german school system, iPads form 7th to 13th grade): They are marking, annotating and rearranging parts of the digitized pages as they like. It would be impossible with printed books. (ok, they could take a picture with the camera and do the same) They have/use printed books but most of the students are borrowing them from the school and are not allowed to write in them.
So I use mostly digital material and most of the books stay at home for studying (the books are heavy).
> jump back and forth between pages quickly
You can't do it quickly. Jumping between random pages isn't useful (and not faster than in an ebook), so you want to jump to a specific page, and here ebook is much faster, whether you're opening a page number or a page with some content you remember
> know where to flip to approximately to start my search.
Or you can start precisely with an ebook
With the use of bookmarks (prepared or improvised with index cards, etc.) or sticky notes, precision jumping within a physical book is very quick, easy, and useful.
Of course it's not, you can't fit all the words in a book on index cards, you can't fit all the appearances of a given character in a story, all the memorable highlights- all trivially done at scale in a digital book. You can't jump from the index at the end to the required 5 pages where this term appears at the speed of a click
And then your highlights also can't unstick because there is some dirt that ruined the stickiness of a note. And your carefully prepared unsticky bookmarks (you didn't have sticky notes around, so you've followed your advice and improvised) can't all fall out just because your book fell with its back up
I'm not claiming that physical books have all the properties of digital ones, or vice versa.
But there are reasonable affordances to a practical extent within both formats.
I have a large print collection, and a much larger digital one, presently largely on an Onyx BOOX ebook reader. I'm well acquainted with the capabilities and limitations on both systems.
(I've discussed the BOOX device fairly extensively in previous HN comments for those interested.)
I personally never used any of these things back when I was a student
I'd agree except for the ability to search in an e-book. There's nothing worse than knowing the textbook in front of you contains the answer you need but not remembering which of the 1500 pages contains it. Being able to CTRL-F saved me hours of time when I went back to school after e-books became common.