What is a Book?
Lisa Paul
>Assuming that the Ebook is portable and curl-upable, what do you think?
>
Well, fine as long as someone else bought it for me. I would probably have to go without used paperbacks for a year to buy one of those.
John McCarthy
the poster.
--
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. - Proverbs i,17
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
Bryan Solie
>Hmm. This difference of opinion has a strong correlation with the sex of
>the poster.
>
A quick poll:
-------------------
From: mwin...@yoyodyne.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Mary Winters)
Date: 9 Aug 91 15:26:18 GMT
For paper
From: repn...@leland.Stanford.EDU (Janet M. Lafler)
Date: 9 Aug 91 16:23:52 GMT
For paper
From: jje...@convex.UUCP (James Jensen)
Date: 9 Aug 91 17:52:07 GMT
No opinion presented.
From: lp...@ogicse.cse.ogi.edu (Lisa Paul)
Date: 9 Aug 91 18:23:21 GMT
For paper
From: wug...@wums2.wustl.edu (Dan Flasar)
Date: 9 Aug 91 20:21:32 GMT
For paper (at least for pleasure reading; doesn't give an opinion for other
reading.
-------------------
I'd double-check your test of significance, John.
I like to curl up too. Great big comfy chair. Coffee in the morning,
whiskey in the evening. The organic experience of reading is a pleasant
ritual after a day rustling electrons.
On the other hand, there's nothing that says reading from an LCD (or
whatever) can't be a pleasant organic experience as well. And as Tim Bray
points out, the concerns that've been brought up are technical problems.
Not even very difficult ones. Drop a few search and paging circuits on a
memory board, plug the whole thing into an LCD display with built-in driver,
and presto, instant reader. The only real nuisance (in my mind) would be
the display. It'd have to be reflective (translates to LCD, in current
technology), and the resolution would have to be very high (a look at
Sony's Watchman will convince you how far LCDs have to go here).
The cost goes away with mass production, and the whole shebang would be
solid-state, plastic, (preferably hot tea/coffee/other-proof) and light enough
not to matter.
Admittedly not invulnerable, but not as subject to time as bad bindings.
You'd probably want to keep it out of severe heat, but you probably want to
keep your paperback out of the Erie Canal, too.
For writers (and r.a.b.ers with big libraries), the ability to search a
book quickly for a particular passage or phrase would be invaluable.
I'll stop, because I'm starting to try to figure where I can get parts.
First sign of technerd-hood.
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Bryan Solie
I owe my allegiance to no organization. I am a citizen of the world.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Matt Austern
> Here's my fantasy. The pocket terminal consists of two sheets of
> foldable plastic and a tiny CPU.
...
> The screen is color, 2000 by 2000.
You have lower standards than I do.
I sometimes read books that have been "typeset" on 300dpi laser
printers; I find this resolution unacceptably poor. I don't know what
the minimum resolution is for decent print quality, but I imagine it's
an order of magnitude or so better than that. Putting a full page on
a screen, then, requires 20000 by 20000 or so.
(And, of course, these 10^8 or 10^9 pixels must be updated
instantaneously: as quickly as I'm able to turn a paper page now.)
And then, I find reading a glowing screen much more tiring than
reading a printed page. Books also have much higher contrast than LCD
screens and the like.
I don't think technology is anywhere close to producing an acceptable
electronic book. Not that I'm terribly saddened by that. As many
other people have pointed out, books are pleasant physical objects,
not just stacks of information. I don't think than even a
well-designed computer could be as comfortable.
--
Matt Austern ma...@physics.berkeley.edu Lots of things worth saying
(415) 644-2618 aus...@lbl.bitnet can only be said loosely.
Timothy Buchanan
the PC) showed off the Sony Dataman. If this is the E-book, they're
going to need a much larger screen on the thing to interest me, and
I'm a gadget freak. It looked about 2 1/2 inches diagonal.
--
Timothy Buchanan - via FidoNet node 1:367/9
UUCP: ...!uunet!oamicus!iq/sju
ARPA: iq/s...@oamicus.FIDONET.ORG
John McCarthy
rolls up into a cylinder that fits in the shirt pocket like a pen.
The second is the keyboard which behaves the same. The CPU is
another pen. The thing is also a cellular phone. When reading
one calls up page one of the book, newspaper, magazine or newsgroup
from the Library of Congress. The screen is color, 2000 by 2000.
If actually working, one has two or more screens, so that as much
reference information as one wants can be simultaneously visible.
--
Surely in vain the net is spread in the sight of any bird. - Proverbs i,17
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
Johnathan Vail
In article <JMC.91Au...@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU> j...@DEC-Lite.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy) writes:
> Here's my fantasy. The pocket terminal consists of two sheets of
> foldable plastic and a tiny CPU.
...
> The screen is color, 2000 by 2000.
You have lower standards than I do.
I sometimes read books that have been "typeset" on 300dpi laser
printers; I find this resolution unacceptably poor. I don't know what
the minimum resolution is for decent print quality, but I imagine it's
an order of magnitude or so better than that. Putting a full page on
a screen, then, requires 20000 by 20000 or so.
As I understand it, (I am a programmer and not a type expert) the
minimum acceptable resolution for low end text and line-art is 600
dpi. Paper (xerographic) typesetters can get about 1000 dpi.
Most professional work uses film recorders at 1200 or 2400 dpi. Color
work typically takes 2400 or 3000 dpi for good results.
Still, that is for publishing. I find that the ~72 dpi Sun 3/60 mono
monitor is acceptable for reading. I stare at it for most of the day
hacking and reading news without much strain.
jv <- lots of dots
Law of Stolen Flight: Only flame, and things with wings.
All the rest suffer stings.
_____
| | Johnathan Vail | n1...@tegra.com
|Tegra| (508) 663-7435 | N1...@448.625-(WorldNet)
----- j...@n1dxg.ampr.org {...sun!sunne ..uunet}!tegra!vail
John McCarthy
to provide, users will make their own compromises.
--
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys
to teenage boys.
Ted Krueger
>Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys
>to teenage boys.
>
>John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
What do you mean "like"?
Be Excellent To Each Other
Ted Krueger
kru...@writeon.physics.arizona.edu