Search Inside The Book hacking

From ScottWiki

Page numbers

There are two ways of discovering the page number.

• There's a `ref=' tag in the URL, which contains the page number at the end. It's not always reliable, however. For example, after zooming in or out the ref tag doesn't show the page number until you move to the next or previous page. Also, within the `excerpt' and within the table of contents, the ref tag is useless.
• There's a `p=' tag later in the URL, which is in base 36 (0-9A-Z), counting from the start of the book. Thus there's an offset between this pagination and the actual one.

Ideally, the page number algorithm would combine these; use the ref tag until seeing a page with a valid ref and p tag. At this point, calibrate the pagination offset, and use the p tag subsequently. (Be wary, however; inside excerpts and TOCs the p tag is still invalid!)

Page limits

For example, reading Chari and Pressley's `Quantum Groups', I ran into a limit after approximately 55 pages, provoking the following response.

However, the very next day, it was willing to give me more. (I viewed another 19 pages.)

It seems that the page limits are not actually per book! After being denied more pages from `Quantum Groups', I was denied any pages from Jones' and Sunder's `Subfactors'. Ahha! Both of these books are from CUP. Picking a random book from the CUP homepage (`The Torture Papers' 0521853249), I still can't search inside the book. On the other hand, I can't search inside Fulton and Harris, from Springer. So it's an overall limit... What a pity!