Re: Logical Order in a "manifest" vs in "content"

As a Reading System implementor we use the Spine, or the logically ordered list of content in the package, for a few important things.  These are generally preprocessing type things where you want to use iteration, rather than trying to follow links programmatically (which may or may not be linear), to get a sense of how much content there is in the publication.  This allows you to create features around the idea of "percentage read” which comes up quite often in user navigation, user interface and reporting features.

If a publication is truly non-linear, I am not sure how one would provide end users with a “reading" experience as opposed to “browsing” experience. In my opinion it’s this difference, and the consumer expectations there, that separates a reading system from a browser.

Patrick Keating
CTO, Bluefire Productions
www.bluefirereader.com<http://www.bluefirereader.com>
206.781.1411