[imadethis]

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.

[jcranmer]

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.

[Suppafly]

>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.

[groby_b]

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 :)

[doug_durham]

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.

[smarx007]

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...

[bluGill]

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.

[eesmith]

I got "A City on Mars: Can We Settle Space, Should We Settle Space, and Have We Really Thought This Through?" for Christmas, by the Weinersmiths.

The index is so good I've shared my happiness about it several times.

[iforgot22]

If your PDF has a traditional index in it, you can read it then jump to the right page.

[dredmorbius]

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.

[iforgot22]

You mean like page 20 in the PDF isn't "page 20" in the index? Unless the pages are out of order or extra stuff is inserted, you should be able to simply add an offset. Or worst case, you binary-search the PDF like you would with a book.

[dredmorbius]

There are various permutations.

There are scanned-in books whose index pages don't precisely match the digital pages. Good PDFs will account for that offset themselves, but manual recalculation may be necessary.

Worse are books half-assedly converted from print to digital. These often include an index (useful for all the reasons others have mentioned elsewhere in this thread), but the "faithful" reproduction of the print text means that the page enumeration in the index bears a nonconstant relationship to the digital text. The offsets are not constant.

Then there are ePubs with the above feature. The sane thing to do would be to link the index entry to occurances. Often you'll find, again, print-edition page mentions which are of little use in locating the passage within your digital edition.

One of the underlying problems is that the print notion of "page" is increasingly archaic. For languages / typographies in which paragraphs are a useful convention, paragraph numbering might be preferable (this should be constant across formats). Direct symlinks are of course useful, but these conceal information revealed in a conventional (print) index such as passages where a topic is discussed at some length, or clusters of appearances, as well as cross-references or associated references which a well-constructed index will reveal.

[iforgot22]

I can't remember examples like those, but one I deal with is where the index has a different kind of numbering scheme like "E403.1-a". But at least cmd+f maybe works in that case, unless of course that string shows up everywhere.

[smarx007]

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.

[1]: https://abookindexer.com/why-use-a-qualified-indexer/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to_Read_a_Book

[op00to]

It is quite disheartening to see a comment about farriers being downvoted. In professional blacksmith shops, horse shoeing is a job done by a qualified farrier and not as trivial as one may think.

[smarx007]

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.