出版与作家生涯2012blog.findings.com
作家史蒂文·约翰逊谈电子书缺失的东西：“略读”
Author Steven Johnson on what e-books are missing: "Skimming."
导读
这则帖子围绕 Steven Johnson 提出的电子书缺失“略读”能力展开，评论者进一步讨论电子书是否仍被纸质书的线性形态束缚。讨论涉及搜索与略读的取舍、技术文档的导航设计，以及电子书结构应如何更灵活。写作者可从中思考如何让文本更便于读者定位、折叠和抓取重点。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
写作时别只按线性叙述推进，要用标题、层级和摘要给读者提供可略读、可跳读的入口。
- 02
技术性写作应明确标出核心结论及其依赖路径，方便读者按需展开或收起论证。
- 03
把“可搜索”和“可略读”都当作读者体验来设计，而不是用检索功能替代清晰结构。
- 04
电子书和长文的排版与导航也是写作的一部分：结构混乱会让好内容难以被读者找到。
HN 评论精选
电子书应突破纸质线性限制，用可折叠层级、路径高亮和跨章节连接服务不同阅读需求。
略读还不是最关键的问题。现在的电子书本质上像装了马达的19世纪马车，仍被线性形式限制；“书”需要被重新想象。阅读当然是线性的，但书不必如此。比如，为什么文本只能平铺呈现？这难道不是纸张限制的后果？有没有电子书能按层级动态折叠文本？读数学文本时，我有时想高亮核心结果，有时想聚焦某个结果并标出证明它所需的“辅助定理路径”，有时想在页面上看到跨章节结果之间的联系，而不必来回翻页并靠短期记忆记住一切；有时我想看作者的评论和“连接组织”，有时只想看结构。Apple 支持从高亮和笔记生成抽认卡是很好的第一步，但实现还很笨拙。令人沮丧的是，人们做电子书时仍像受制于纸质书的物理限制，其实形式、结构和交互都可以更有弹性。
HSO查看英文原文
Skimming is the least of it. Current ebooks, in their linear form, are essentially the equivalent of 19th century horse carriages with motors. "Books" need to be reimagined. While reading is and will remain a fundamentally linear activity, there is no reason why books need to be. For example: Why is text presented flatly? Isn't that a direct consequence of the limitation of physical paper? Where are the ebooks that allow you to dynamically fold text according to hierarchical order? In a mathematical text, say, sometimes I'd like to highlight the core results; other times, I want to home in on a particular result and highlight the "path" (i.e. the "helper thms" that are needed to establish the core result). Yet other times, I'd like to see the connection between results across sections _on the page_, i.e. without paging back and forth and holding everything in short-term memory. Sometimes I want the author's comments and discussion and "connective tissue"; other times, I don't want to see anything but the structure. Apple did a good thing, a first step with the option to generate flashcards from your highlighting and notes. This is one extremely obvious thing that ebooks were missing, although I think the implementation is not yet very good, rather clumsy in fact. Sometimes I get frustrated that people keep making ebooks as if they were still limit to the same physical constraints as paper books. The whole form and structure and interaction could be made much more malleable, such that the presentation of ideas "adapts" to your brain rather than your brain adapting to a successive, linear, "rectangular", fixed presentation and compensating for it. It's not like "ebooks" simply means adding a bit of "multimedia" like it's the 90s...
搜索不能替代略读，且电子书出版缺少校对会直接损害阅读质量。
我愿意用略读能力换关键词搜索能力。电子书更大的问题是很多懒惰的出版商根本不校对，质量明显受影响。我个人会买纸质书（价格一样），再找高质量“粉丝制作”版本在电脑或平板上用。
radicalbyte查看英文原文
I happily trade the ability to skim for the ability to search by keyword. The bigger problem with eBooks is that there are a lot of lazy publishers who don't bother proof-reading their ebooks, with the obvious impact on quality. I've personally resorted to buying the physical book (the cost is the same) and then acquiring high quality "fan made" versions for use on the PC/tablet.
技术文档的电子阅读导航若繁琐缓慢，会严重破坏查阅和略读体验。
我完全同意。这在研究论文或教科书等技术文档中尤其明显。在 Kindle 上翻到某一页，要进菜单、弹出符号列表、用方向键逐个移动到每一位数字，再点“前往”；每次按键后屏幕刷新还要约半秒。然后你得重复 log(n) 次，直到（用二分搜索）找到想看的章节。设计得很糟糕。
bo1024查看英文原文
I absolutely agree. This is especially noticeable with more technical documents like research papers or textbooks. On the kindle, to flip to a particular page, you have to go into the menu, pop up a symbols list, navigate with arrows to each digit, then click go. And each of these keypresses takes a long time -- probably half a second -- for the screen to refresh. Then, you repeat log(n) times until you've found (via binary search) the section you were looking for. Poorly thought out.
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