Here's an idea I just had I thought might help bring a little bit of additional realism to the Equestria of anyone describing non-unicorn ponies reading.

In my mind it never made much sense for books targeted at pegasi and earth ponies to be codices, which is what we usually understand when we think of the word "book": individual pages joined by a spine and wrapped in a more resistant material for cover. The usability for hoof users, even adjusting for extreme dexterity with mouths and tongues, would be awful. Besides, no matter how resistant the paper is and how careful the pony trying to read it, the amount of damage due to saliva and hard hooves hitting on paper would render books into pulp after a short while. So while unicorns wouldn't have problem with codices most of the pony population would.

So my take is that books for ponies in general would be long two-roller scrolls. A pony would hold it by its two rollers, whose ends would be sized in a convenient enough way for him to bite, then move it depositing it on a table, then go about unrolling one roller/rolling the other with his hooves while reading the contents, without at any point having to actually touch the paper itself. It'd also be a convenient format to store in saddle bags since different books could be easily identified apart from the rollers' ends appearance and those directly bitten into so as to retrieve the desired one.

General random access reference works such as dictionaries and encyclopedias would still have to be codices though, there's no convenient way to make them into scrolls, but they'd be made with much thicker and more resistant paper so as to avoid excessive damage. Similarly unicorn-only books (treatises on magic or the like) would be thinner-paged codices since they're easy for telekinetics to handle without damaging the contents.

As for everything else though, it'd most certainly be scrolls, all the time.

PS.: Some additional notes:

a) I think a typical format for the ends of the rollers would be hexagonal. That'd provide stability when trying to read a book on a non-perfectly-horizontal surface, for otherwise the roll could slip and go about unrolling by itself, a Very Bad Thing.

b) A typical accessory would be a reading box in which one would put a standard-sized scroll. It'd allow the reader to avoid opening the scroll on a dirty surface. It'd also probably have some kind of lateral openings to ease the process of rolling/unrolling the rollers.

c) A deluxe book would probably be sold with its own artistically produced reading box, being the equivalent of our hardcover codices and providing both extra protection as well as that feeling of owning something expensive.

d) On a TCB setting these differences on what a book is/isn't/should be (including the extra category of digital ones) could work as background for some interesting tidbit cultural commentaries both from the perspective of humans and native ponies alike.

i think people have been using scrolls as that is what the main "letter" system is.
but i have seen a few instances where each page of the "book" has had a tab added to allow easier flipping of said pages.

then again it also depends on how you view ponies in general.
for instance if you think pegasai wings can double as "hands" then there is no change for them.
and there is also the "invisible hands" effect as well, where anyone with hooves basically has hands. a good example is dash in "read it and weep" and octavia and her bow
and pinkie as... well pinkie.
so there is that.
but also depending on how... "thriving" the world is there is also touch screens and "holo" screens.

2404259
Yes, but I think of these also more in historical terms. As a matter of course it's presumable scrolls would have developed first as they did in our world. And given pony physiology my guess is that different from what happened here the format would have remained popular.

But it all depends on whether you take ponies' dexterity as a magical, physical or in-between ability. If magical then sure, for all practical purposes they have hands and can use them as such so general codex usage makes sense. If physical then them playing string instruments is due more to them being very good at using the small features of their hooves to pull and push the strings rather than telekinetically controlling them, which is the scenario I have in mind for scroll books remaining the default. And the in-between option would have ponies with more and ponies with less telekinetically-enhanced hoof dexterity, hence a situation that on average would still favor scrolls over codices as the general case.

2403679 Of course, the biggest issue is that we see books being the common format. So explanations could vary. Perhaps paper produced from earth-pony grown trees is more resilient, pony lips are rather dextrous (my preference), ponies don't salivate excessively (also my preference), or their paper-manufacture just has it so they always produce resilient thick-page paper.

2405071
Yep, those all work, but where's the fun in that?

Here's a thought experiment. Suppose a scenario where all the alternatives you proposed are valid: resilient paper plus low salivating plus dextrous lips. You're an earth pony and also as good as it gets in handling both codex-style and scroll-style books. You visit Ponyville's Library and asks Twilight for the latest Daring Do novel. She answers: "Sure! We have both the codex and the scroll edition. Which do you prefer?"

My bet is you'd reply "The scroll one, please!" if for no other reason than that turning pages in the codex edition requires you to remove your eyes from the text, move your head to the book, swiftly change the page, move your head back and only then continue reading, while with the scroll one you can keep your eyes on the text the whole time while periodically moving only your hooves, or even a single hoof if you happen to own one of those fancy new reading boxes with gears in which spinning a single lever causes both rollers to rotate, all yours for the low, low price of 15 bits!

I guess my main point then is that scroll books would as a rule be more convenient for the majority and hence the most commonly used format.

2403679 If the ponies had the dexterity of real equines that would be the case, but ponies have incredible dexterity with their hooves, and many writers write that all three types have magic gravity wells in their hooves that can be activated at will. Besides that, if the ponies had trouble reading books, when the library have walking scroll readers like Dinotopia?

I have an off topic question - Books are more popular in the modern day, but what are the pros and cons of book use and scroll use?

2425997

many writers write that all three types have magic gravity wells in their hooves that can be activated at will

Sure. My suggestion is for an alternate reality with more limitations, which always provide for interesting solution seeking. I like to picture ponies as not having what amounts to opposable thumbs, and thus for them to have developed a society in which everyday stuff is extremely well adapted to this.

In such a reality while tactile telekinesis would still exist, it'd be limited to the "one huge sticky finger" kind. As a result holding a codex opened by having one front hoof "glued" to the front cover and the other to the back cover would mean that nothing is actually keeping the pages themselves in place, so any breeze would make them fly. Pegasi would be able to deal with this more easily by using their wings to hold the pages in place, and both earth ponies and pegasi alike would be able to simply open codices directly on surfaces and then press down the pages. Also in terms of changing pages this tactile telekinesis would allow them to pull a page up, but then they'd have to deactivate it (so wind could again cause pages to fly), change hooves (moving the other into a somewhat awkward angle) so as to "hoofipulate" the other side of the page, then activate it again and press down. In the end all of these movements, while feasible, wouldn't be "as good as" just opting for a scroll book instead of a codex book, and thus scrolls would continue being popular (for fiction at least).

Besides that, if the ponies had trouble reading books, when the library have walking scroll readers like Dinotopia?

Sorry, I'm not sure I understand the reference. Do you mean Spike? If so, sure, I guess among creatures with fingers (dragons, diamond dogs, gryphons etc.), even if they are of the non-opposable thumbs variety, codices would be more popular than scrolls. The same would apply to anyone with full telekinesis such as unicorns.

Books are more popular in the modern day, but what are the pros and cons of book use and scroll use?

Basically codices have lots of advantages scrolls, particularly long ones, don't have. You can easily move to any point in the text without having to roll/unroll a long paper, you can make good use of both sides of the paper, and a codex can be more compact. For a species with hands a scroll provides no advantages really, which is why it went into disuse.

2426868 First to explain the Dinotopia scroll reading machines, have a look Here. Trying to find this scene was frustrating as I haven't seen the movie in a long time, but there are wonderful philosophies within it, and I believe thinkers would certainly enjoy it, even though it has no ponies ;p

Concerning the complicated process of turning pages for ponies. There are many things we do everyday that require practiced dexterity, but we don't think about them because they have become first nature. Take for instance the fact that we type on a keyboard - type writers have been around for about 150 years, a mere blink in human history, and the act of typing is a non-essential skill to survive, yet at almost the same speed at which we sub-vocalize our thoughts, our minds have decrypted them into writing (another non-essential skill), broken them down into letters, and then send rapid fire instructions to move from one key to the next in the list without returning to the home row. The index fingers control six keys each, so without returning to the home row, that is 36 instruction sets (if I have my math right) just for one finger in one tiny portion of the whole typing process.

Yet this complicated skill is a part of our daily lives, because our society has made it an artificial need and has made it common enough in our lives so that we learn it with ease. I imagine that no matter how complicated the task is, if pony society places value upon it, the skill will be picked up as the ponies grow. Since ponies do not have hands, manual dexterity with their hooves would be essential and all the complicated things that could be done with them would be learned with ease.

2594520 An excellent point on the capacity to learn how to do things. The cerebellum is a positively wonderful piece of the brain, making habitual actions come as naturally as breathing.

2594520

First to explain the Dinotopia scroll reading machines, have a look Here.

Ah, amazing! I could totally see one of those in a history that included this little premise of mine. Read and get fit. It certainly puts a spin to notion of "mens sana corpore sano". I can already imagine Twilight arguing with RD about this so as to try and make her read more.

I imagine that no matter how complicated the task is, if pony society places value upon it, the skill will be picked up as the ponies grow.

Yes, certainly. My focus is more one of convenience, not on whether it's doable or not. In fact your example of keyboards is a good case example for this, in both directions:

On the one hand, typing, even in an old style typewriter, is faster and less error prone than doing it by hand, and so everyone who needed and wanted to type faster and/or with less errors went for it because it increased their overall writing convenience. In fact it was so much faster that the QWERTY layout was designed to slow typists down so that they wouldn't continuous cause key jams.

On the other hand, once the physical keyboard itself becomes inconvenient, we don't mind (much) letting it go away even if the end result is a slower / more error prone writing experience, provided we find the end result more convenient overall. That evidently is the case with tablets and smartphones, where we value the smaller size and weight coupled with a bigger proportional area devoted to the screen.

Thus my take is that in a pony world scrolls would be more convenient for reading serialized content, because easier to interact with using hooves, and codices would be more convenient for finding non-serialized information fast, because easier for one to jump to any single point, the downside of it being slower for you to advance the text one page at a time once you found the information you were seeking not mattering much in this case.

So both would exist, each one within its own niche and applicability, pretty much like we ourselves still use paper, keyboards and keyboard-less screens for writing, and paper, e-paper and active screens for reading, a list that would still include scrolls if these had any advantage for us, which they don't.

Thus the question can be simply stated thus: do you think a sizable portion of the pony population would find books printed as scrolls useful? If so, scrolls would be around and would be the preferred format in all those circumstances. If not, then not.

By the way, the show itself, particularly in the last episode, seems to imply ponies do find scrolls useful enough to have a lot of them around, only not as many as my own reasoning suggests. So I guess my interpretation of things wouldn't change much compared to the original. It'd alter the proportion, increasing the amount of scrolls and decreasing that of codices, but other than that things would remain pretty much as depicted.

2600671 I don't think both would exist in a modern world as common place, because of ponies like Twilight who want unity and order. It would be quite a hassle to divide library shelfing into books and scrolls, and they would have to be divided because they can't fit on the same type of shelf. I'm fairly sure that books are more spacially efficient than scrolls, so when it came to mass storage the book would win out.

For ponies who keep writings in their house, they would want to keep the collection nice and neat, so even though their libraries aren't as big as a public library, they would choose books because it looks nicer on a shelf. Being part of the reading community, I tend to think when one loves the act, they will put up with format changes.

As far as the question of convenience, the funny thing about it is that it is measured over time. Most people today who have access to a keyboard will type out whatever needs to be written, since full keyboard phones this has become more popular since a phone is always on a person but pen and paper are kept in specific locations. If one is learning how to type, but has already mastered how to write, then this can seem like a draw back, but as the population's average skill with the act rises over time, the act becomes not just common place, but expected.

By the way, QWERTY was not designed to be slower, it just is; during the time of the door to door salesman typewriter companies wanted to get their product sold without needing to train each salesman, thus the top row of letters has the word “typewriter” built into it, but jumbled up allowing the salesman to look like they knew how to type, making it look easy to learn for the customer... In 1936, Dr. August Dvorak perfected his keyboard layout, which was designed to be faster and less stressful, his layout was so fast that manual keyboards would jam, but since the computer this is no longer an issue. The Dvorak keyboard layout is used by the fastest typist in the world, many popular novelists, and is recommended by doctors to reduce and cure RTS/CTS.

2673338
Storage compactness is a powerful argument. Yes, it makes sense, perhaps even enough to move the proportion back to what's shown in the show. Thanks!

In regards to the QWERTY layout, it turns out we both are incorrect. According to the Wikipedia article it was designed to both allow faster typing and avoiding jams, so my affirmation that it was for it to be slower was incorrect. On the other hand, the information that it was designed to allow for the typing of "typewriter" is unsubstantiated. In any case it's good to learn how things actually went, so thanks again for prompting me to look into it!