A common way to break the flow of long pages of text is to encapsulate sections within boxes, so to speak. You've probably seen this in word processors, or PDF viewers, to name a couple of prevalent examples.
This also is how many of the popular "reader" applications display the paginated content, and there is no reason a web page couldn't be designed that way from the beginning as well. Or, with the number of amazing designers out there, maybe something completely different.
I agree breaks are important, I'm just not sure multi-request pagination is the best interface for that. We only accept it because it is often necessary due to computing limitations.
I dislike the page metaphor, because, at least in PDFs and most word processors, it means that the page is a fixed width and the text won't reflow to fit my window. If I zoom in, I have to scroll left and right as I read each line! Very annoying.
This also is how many of the popular "reader" applications display the paginated content, and there is no reason a web page couldn't be designed that way from the beginning as well. Or, with the number of amazing designers out there, maybe something completely different.
I agree breaks are important, I'm just not sure multi-request pagination is the best interface for that. We only accept it because it is often necessary due to computing limitations.