Reading (Was Wittgensteins `Tractatus'..)
mprie...@vnet.ibm.com
>Books are regularly annotated, folded, read upside down with one hand,
>stuffed in pockets and bags... in general, not treated well.
How do you treat your CDs? Or do you still listen to LPs?
>Cheap enough to loose means cheap enough not to be stolen. And, like many
>people I have two copies of a book... one hardback for reference, one
>paperback for reading/study/travel/etc
How would you feel about a book-reader the size and cost of a CD Walkman?
And books at, say, $4 a shot? (assuming a 300% markup for royalties and
distribution)
>> Dare one say: Save the trees!? The belief you annunciate, of course,
>> is simply speculation.
>Trees grow. Oil does not. At least not in any appreciably useful time
>period. Nor does silicon. Nor gold. Nor silver... and so on and so on.
"Conserve the silicon!" Let me know when you run low, and I'll sell you a
cubic mile of the Sahara at a reasonable price. Removing silicon from
the environment does considerably less harm than deforestation does. Sand
is not a contributing member of the biosphere.
>Paper books rot, decompose. And I do not through them away; it's a good job
You obviously didn't read my earlier post (Title was : Re: Reading).
Core drills from landfill sites indicate that organic matter does _not_
decompose in dump sites. There isn't enough aeration to allow it. They've
drilled deep and pulled up dessicated heads of lettuce, and perfectly legible
magazines and newspapers from the 1950's. Unless you personally compost
your books, you do _not_ have the moral highground on this issue.
By the way, I can fit about 500 books on a CD. When I decide to throw it out
(because, gosh-darn-it, it's _cluttering_up_my_desk_!!!), it represents the
vital loss to this planet of just about NIL resources, and takes up an
equivalent amount of space in that landfill site (or I can hang it on my wall
and say it's art). Now, when you throw out those 500 books that have grown
moldy in your basement, say at least a tiny prayer for the acre or so of
old-growth forest that was destroyed to make those books, and another
tiny prayer for the various inhabitants of that old-growth forest that
died when it did (an ecosystem is a fragile thing), and another tiny
prayer for the ecosystem that died when they had to expand the landfill to
fit your books in (note that once you bury them, the mold suffocates and dies).
Now, frankly, I'm a selfish sod, and I will continue to read books on paper
until the industry makes it convenient for me to switch to electronic.
But since the technology already exists, and since there are already big
players in the marketplace eager to push it, I think it'll become convenient
for me sooner rather than later.
Take care,
Michael Priestley
mprie...@vnet.ibm.com
Disclaimer: speaking on my own behalf, not IBM's.
OmniMedia
>Now, frankly, I'm a selfish sod, and I will continue to read books on paper
>until the industry makes it convenient for me to switch to electronic.
>But since the technology already exists, and since there are already big
>players in the marketplace eager to push it, I think it'll become convenient
>for me sooner rather than later.
I'm not necessarily a big player in the e-book business, but I do agree much
with what Michael said. The handwriting is on the wall -- electronic books
will become more and more commonplace as the technology to read the books
continues to improve (e.g., light-weight, inexpensive, rugged, book-sized
computers with hi-res screens), and the infrastructure to distribute and sell
the books gets shaken down (I hope my company, OmniMedia, will help establish
this.) And all this will happen whether we like it or not...
I can understand the nostalgia for paper books. In Star Trek:TNG, Captain
Picard is often shown reading an old and dusty book, rather than from an
electronic "pad". Thus, there will always be a market for paper books, just
as there is still a market for vinyl LP's (and I collect 78 RPM records!),
despite the rise of CD's. But because one individual believes paper books
are better for reading, does not necessarily mean that electronic books
therefore will never dominate the marketplace. The CD vs. LP is a clear
example of proof of my assertion (many audiophiles still believe to a
religious fervor that vinyl is far superior sound quality-wise, but look at
on what format 99.9% of all the music is issued on today.)
Jon Noring
OmniMedia
Obnoxious, self-serving, commercial advert:
******************************************
To me, the biggest issue now is not so much technology, but in the marketing
and sales of e-books. OmniMedia, my company, is hoping to establish a
writer-supportive system which allows authors/writers to retain control of
their works (to retain the copyright to their work and to be able to republish
as they see fit) as well as receiving a much higher royalty than they would
get from traditional paper publishing. OmniMedia totally supports the recent
guidelines established by the National Writer's Union regarding electronic
publishing. To get details, obtain a copy of our Information Document from
ftp.netcom.com /pub/OmniMedia/books/publish/infodoc.txt , or e-mail me.
For an example of an original work published through OmniMedia, download
ftp.netcom.com /pub/OmniMedia/books/firefur.zip .
Note that OmniMedia is the first electronic book publisher to use SoftLock,
which prevents the unpaid reading of any author-selected portions of the
electronic book (say the last few chapters). This allows the e-books to be
freely distributed in whole over the networks without any restriction. It
also allows the reader to try it and see if they like it enough to purchase
the password via an 800 number to read the locked portion. Also, since each
password is unique to each computer, password sharing is not a problem! See
the Information Document for further details.
End of Obnoxious, self-serving commercial advert
************************************************
--
OmniMedia | Famous literary works are available from OmniMedia as
1312 Carlton Place | hypertext electronic books for Windows 3.1. Check
Livermore, CA 94550 | anonymous ftp site ftp.netcom.com /pub/OmniMedia/books.
510-294-8153 | WWW access coming very soon.
Jackson Tam
*even.. by Omni...@netcom.com
> are better for reading, does not necessarily mean that electronic books
> therefore will never dominate the marketplace.
In order for electronic books to dominate, don't they have to provide
something that goes beyond the paper book? (not superficial features
like high-lighting).
OmniMedia
I don't think so (in the long-run). But e-books will no doubt have the
extra features because they are trivial to add, such as hypertext/hypermedia,
full text searching, etc. OmniMedia's e-books already have hypertext and
some have (soon to be published) full text searching. This will only
accelerate their appeal and market penetration.
To me, the biggest appeal will occur when inexpensive, rugged, high-rez,
book size computers hit the market with large storage capacity. Imagine such
a computer, the size of a paperback or a little larger, holding 1-2 Gb of
books. This would hold approximately 1000+ books (depending on their size
and extent of multimedia extensions). You could go on travel and bring your
whole library with you! Or, you can take it to bed and you won't necessarily
need a reading light! Not only that, these books will have the aforementioned
extra features that paperbooks don't have.
When this occurs may be 10-15 years off (pending technology development,
mainly to cut costs), but this can be done today (but not inexpensively,
unfortunately).
Jon Noring
OmniMedia
No Obnoxious Ad this time!
kk
Gary Merrill
|> To me, the biggest appeal will occur when inexpensive, rugged, high-rez,
|> book size computers hit the market with large storage capacity. Imagine such
|> a computer, the size of a paperback or a little larger, holding 1-2 Gb of
|> books. This would hold approximately 1000+ books (depending on their size
|> and extent of multimedia extensions). You could go on travel and bring your
|> whole library with you! Or, you can take it to bed and you won't necessarily
|> need a reading light! Not only that, these books will have the aforementioned
|> extra features that paperbooks don't have.
|>
|> When this occurs may be 10-15 years off (pending technology development,
|> mainly to cut costs), but this can be done today (but not inexpensively,
|> unfortunately).
There seems to be a real confusion here. Why should you need such storage
capacity? If the books are available on CD's (say mini CDs) and the machine
has a mini-CD reader -- as laptops currently have floppy drives -- what's the
need for the 1-2 gig of built-in secondary storage? The little CDs are
easily portable (more so than paperbacks) and quite robust. They weigh
practically nothing. The only point of possessing the 1-2 gig storage
would be to have a massive inter-linked library whose volumes you needed
to access simultaneously.
--
Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, Compiler and Tools Division]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
Rheal Nadeau
Just one point to that - would I be able to scribble on it? Highlight
a passage for later reference? Make annotations in the margins, as I
can with real books?
I don't do this often with paper books, but I do it at times - and it's
functionality I don't want to lose. Reading is not just a passive
experience - if I want that I'll watch TV.
The Rhealist . Rheal Nadeau . nad...@bnr.ca . One reader's opinion
Kathy Vincent
: Someone mentions that books should be distributed on mini-CDs.
: Just one point to that - would I be able to scribble on it? Highlight
: a passage for later reference? Make annotations in the margins, as I
: can with real books?
: I don't do this often with paper books, but I do it at times - and it's
: functionality I don't want to lose. Reading is not just a passive
: experience - if I want that I'll watch TV.
I do it all the time. Helps me concentrate. I used to be a rabid
underliner. Still am sometimes, but more often nowadays, I'll
make one of a personal a hierarchy of tic marks in the margin
next to passages that interest me, that seem important,
that amuse me, that make me think, that amaze me, etc.
I may never look at that book again, much less take note
of the notes in the margin, but reading with that pen
(never a pencil) in my hand helps me focus my attention
on what I'm reading. In memory training, don't they tell
to involve as many senses as possible. By making marks in
the margin, I am using touch as well as vision to remember,
to associate.
Kathy Vincent
John C. Moran
: The bottleneck is current display technology. As soon as someone can
: come up with a decent computer screen, people will start to switch to
: electronic format. I'm not very hopeful that this will come about
: anytime soon. The issue isn't resolution - the glowing TV screen is
: just the wrong sort of display for reading. My eyes start to go crazy
Precisely the major point of this whole issue; books are now superior for
reading and until the screen or whatever can even approach the printed
page's functionality for reading, books will survive and be preferable.
(Or, is this just the response of someone who grew up on books not screens?)
jm
Gary Merrill
In article <35ve0v$g...@bcarh8ab.bnr.ca>, nad...@bnr.ca (Rheal Nadeau) writes:
|> Someone mentions that books should be distributed on mini-CDs.
|>
|> Just one point to that - would I be able to scribble on it? Highlight
|> a passage for later reference? Make annotations in the margins, as I
|> can with real books?
I don't see any reason that all of this could not be supported (some publishing
packages support much of it now). Actually, it is a lot better than making
annotations in the margin since there is limited space in the margin. And
it would be real nice to be able to make those annotations and scribbles
appear and disappear when you chose, wouldn't it. One thing holding back
more mass accessibility of this sort of thing now is the expense of CD devices
that allow writing rather than just reading. Things will change. It will
only get better: e.g., adding your own hypertext links instead of scribbling
"see p. 241" in the margin.
Chris Despopoulos
You mean like saving trees?
Search/queries?
Conditional processing such as found in IETM or
the Mac Sys 7.5 Help system?
Network distribution?
Alternate models of the information space?
Associative capacity with other texts?
Potential for interaction?
Mark S Wright
They do. The issue isn't really paper vs. electronic books, but paper vs.
electronic *libraries*. Even my paltry collection of books takes several
inconveniently large boxes and a dolly to move around in paper format.
In electronic format, I wouldn't even strain a muscle. Think back to
the year when you took chemestry, art history and a shakespeare survey
at the same time...
The bottleneck is current display technology. As soon as someone can
come up with a decent computer screen, people will start to switch to
electronic format. I'm not very hopeful that this will come about
anytime soon. The issue isn't resolution - the glowing TV screen is
just the wrong sort of display for reading. My eyes start to go crazy
after about ten minutes of reading electronic text. The day someone
invents a screen which is as easy on the eyes as the printed page, the
paper book will become a curiosity. (That'll be when the "Paperless
Office" will finally come about, too.)
--
"The real surprise, and Bertolucci's best achievement here, is the
performance of Prince Siddhartha by Keanu Reeves. That is not a
misprint." - Stanley Kaufman, The New Republic.
Mark Wright wrig...@gold.tc.umn.edu
Eugene N. Miya
>Mark S Wright (wrig...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
>: The bottleneck is current display technology. As soon as someone can
>: come up with a decent computer screen, people will start to switch to
>: electronic format.
>: The issue isn't resolution - the glowing TV screen is
>: just the wrong sort of display for reading. My eyes start to go crazy
In article <35vgkv$s...@crl6.crl.com> j...@crl.com (John C. Moran) writes:
>Precisely the major point of this whole issue; books are now superior for
>reading and until the screen or whatever can even approach the printed
^^^^^^^
>page's functionality for reading, books will survive and be preferable.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>(Or, is this just the response of someone who grew up on books not screens?)
My bias: I have now read four Voyager books on my PowerBook, and I used
a Xerox Alto in 1979. I read these books as tests of concept from the
original Dynabook idea and paper by Goldberg and Kay. They even demonstrated
in 1977 that the resolution problem was a minor point: two diagrams illustrated
font changes. And I also suggested to Marvin Minsky that he take the
Society of Mind and place it in hyper media. I see that it is out but
have yet to get it. I have also seen the Media Lab's 2,000 pixel on a
side display.
The technology isn't there yet. It's not clear that it will ever be, but
it is tantalizingly close. Economic issues are involved.
A little over a decade ago, when I was working at JPL a co-worker, Charlie,
lived in the same condo complex as I. Charlie was legally blind, and he always
carried around a set of powerful magnifying lenses. That was for the tyranny
(not functionality) of the printed page. He hated small print. This is not
to justify that a 200 point/pixel font on a screen is the solution.
I don't doubt that some of these books will be sent to speech synthesizers
for the blind.
Electronic books are still crude. I doubt every book will go electronic, but
the media has certain advantages for reference materials, technical materials,
and any form which involves more than one media like a combination involving
graphical information, mathematical, etc. I don't buy this stuff about
curling up next to a fire with my book. I've done it with my PB in
distance places. It's got problems: batteries, the noted noisy disk,
etc. That's in large part a question of time and economy.
I doubt that fiction authors will derive much benefit (the four books were
light weight fiction). They have a different agenda that technical writers
or video game designers. They want the reader to end up at a certain place.
Authors can be a stubborn lot. If some wants to write a book about
"new-gravity," he's going to ago ahead an do it.
Look at news posts. It's amazing the amount of attributed ">" material.
This is the kind of stuff which attracts electronic books: flames,
commentary, "me too"'s, etc. You can search, scribble, mark, annotation those
books on disk. It's possible.
I look back over the past couple of years, and I wish the biography of
James Joyce which I read had been in machine form, I think I would have
appreciated it a bit more. Paper in some ways does represent a rut or
tyranny.
Minsky's book (I have a used paperback copy) might be "landmark," because
it's a pecular book like net posts (not necessarily a good thing), but
it reminds me of Doug Englebart's memos and writing on hypermedia, and it
might mark a new style of writing.
Anyways, back to your usual flamefest.
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
{uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
My 3rd favorite use of a flame thrower is "Fahrenheit 451."
A Ref: Uncommon Sense, Alan Cromer, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
Jim Chiesa
: Just passing thru....
[snip]
: I doubt that fiction authors will derive much benefit (the four books were
: light weight fiction). They have a different agenda that technical writers
: or video game designers. They want the reader to end up at a certain place.
: Authors can be a stubborn lot. If some wants to write a book about
: "new-gravity," he's going to ago ahead an do it.
[snip]
: --eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
: Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
: {uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
: My 3rd favorite use of a flame thrower is "Fahrenheit 451."
: A Ref: Uncommon Sense, Alan Cromer, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
I don't know about fiction _authors,_ but as a reader, my primary
interest in electronic books would probably be fiction. One of the big
advantages of such books is the ability to search. In most nonfiction
books, someone has already performed this function for me and created an
index. For reasons not entirely clear to me, fiction publishers and
writers are under the impression [oops] that their works wouldn't benefit
from an index. So, if a character I don't remember shows up after a
hiatus of 60 or 80 pages, I might have a heck of a time finding out where
that last (or first) mention was. But not if the book were electronic.
-- Jim C.
David E. Latane
I have a number of e-texts of books, yet I have never read a book on
my computer screen. Has anyone here actually read a 400-1000 page
book on the screen, without any oprinted text at all? What's it like?
Do your eyes go buggy?
D. Latane'
p.s., if nobody coughs up a positive example of the Joys of Reading
300,000 words in a row in a few days on screen, I'd say hold off
before sending in those big bucks to your broker.
Roger Squires
>
>A little over a decade ago, when I was working at JPL a co-worker, Charlie,
>lived in the same condo complex as I. Charlie was legally blind, and he always
>carried around a set of powerful magnifying lenses. That was for the tyranny
>(not functionality) of the printed page. He hated small print. This is not
>to justify that a 200 point/pixel font on a screen is the solution.
See I. F. Stone's _The Trial of Socrates_,
in the introduction to which he credits
(the adjustable fonts on) his Macintosh for
being able to finish the book in the face
of deteriorating eyesight. Such customization
is a major selling point for the medium.
>--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
rms
Douglas Clark
I have put all my books of poetry on the World Wide Web but see this
as no substitute for the paper versions. There is much more satisfaction
in turning a page than there is in scrolling on. It is not so convenient.
But WWW has two major uses for me. I can make the latest version of the
text available, free of mistakes and typos. And I can let people who will
never think of buying the paperback have a taste of my poetry. You never
know they might put in an order with their bookseller. But there is no
substitute for the printed word.
--
Douglas Clark Voice : +44 1225 427104
69 Hillcrest Drive, Email : D.G.D...@bath.ac.uk
Bath, Avon, BA2 1HD Books : http://www.bath.ac.uk/~exxdgdc/poetry.html
Alan R. Light
and scrolls that they are used to, and that, although there is a place
for these newfangled technologies of books and etexts,
there will always be a market for scrolls, and a place for scribes.
After all, can you hold a book or a computer out in front of you
with your arms raised before a crowd? It just does not look as grand,
it lacks the power, and the reverence, that holding out a scroll
possesses. Think of all the places where it is easy to hang a scroll
to read it, where you could not hang a book or a computer.
And you always know where you left off reading -- you don't need
a bookmark or a note to remind you. You just see where the scroll
is open to. Actually, I kind of like clay tablets.
Nothing can duplicate the feel of a clay tablet in your arms
as you sit before a fire reading a story to your children.
Yes, there will always be a market for clay tablets,
though stone is more durable.
Speaking of which, can anything replace rock paintings
as the principle form of art? I don't think so. There's nothing like
the experience of looking at a good rock with painting representative
of the last hunt.
It's neat to have all these new technologies, but we are all
used to the old ones, and I don't think people will change,
so while the new technologies may have their place,
the principle media of writing and art will remain clay tablets
and rocks. Yes, I feel certain in this assurance.
Well, I'm off to paint a rock now.
Later,
Alan
--
Alan Light | "The fire is alight and will not be put out until it has
Waxhaw, NC | burnt up the earth's foundations." II Esdras 15:15
ali...@mercury.interpath.net <> ali...@jg.cso.uiuc.edu
OmniMedia
>Someone mentions that books should be distributed on mini-CDs.
>
>Just one point to that - would I be able to scribble on it? Highlight
>a passage for later reference? Make annotations in the margins, as I
>can with real books?
>
>I don't do this often with paper books, but I do it at times - and it's
>functionality I don't want to lose. Reading is not just a passive
>experience - if I want that I'll watch TV.
The answer to your question is an emphatic *yes* and a simultaneous *no*. It
depends on the e-book format and reader. For example, in WinHelp, you can
annotate your WinHelp file.
It is actually possible to do all of what you ask and more -- it's a matter of
somebody seeing a market and a need for what you ask, and to implement it. I'm
sure it will happen.
Next question...
(p.s., those who seem to have difficulty with e-books replacing paper books are
using today's, and even yesterday's, technological paradigm to support their
contention. Technology is not that stagnant and non-changing! E-books WILL
eventually dominate over the print market!)
Jon Noring
OmniMedia
Michael E. Lovell
chi...@swift.rand.org (Jim Chiesa) writes:
>
> I don't know about fiction _authors,_ but as a reader, my primary
> interest in electronic books would probably be fiction. One of the big
> advantages of such books is the ability to search. In most nonfiction
> bqoks, someone has already performed this function for me and created an
> index. For reasons not entirely clear to me, fiction publishers and
> writers are under the impression [oops] that their works wouldn't
> benefit from an index. So, if a character I don't remember shows up
> after a hiatus of 60 or 80 pages, I might have a heck of a time finding
> out where that last (or first) mention was. But not if the book were
> electronic.
> -- Jim C.
>
Exactly! I would love to be able to create my own>guide/glossary/concordance to such multi-volume works=of fiction as Robert
Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Each of the five books in the series so far
is over 800 plges long and covers a lot of ground. Jordan's style is also
to sneak in references to needed background or hints about upcoming events
in out of the way spots in the text. If you could easily retrieve the first
reference to a concept or character when you encounter them later in the
seriec, understanding, comprehension, enjoyment, would be enhanced. This is
only one minor example. I see textual analysis tools as an important part
of the eventual utility/marketability of electronic fiction. Anyone else
agree?
Sara Larson
: Exactly! I would love to be able to create my
as Robert
: Jordan's Wheel of Time series. Each of the five books in the series so far
: is over 800 plges long and covers a lot of ground. Jordan's style is also
: to sneak in references to needed background or hints about upcoming events
: in out of the way spots in the text. If you could easily retrieve the first
: reference to a concept or character when you encounter them later in the
: seriec, understanding, comprehension, enjoyment, would be enhanced. This is
: only one minor example. I see textual analysis tools as an important part
: of the eventual utility/marketability of electronic fiction. Anyone else
: agree?
I have not read any Jordan, but I think we're circling an issue. Don't
some authors write in this sneaky way on purpose, with the complete
intention of trying to fool you or trick you into thinking you weren't
given enough information about the murder suspect/hero's secret
past/etc.? Would the style of some fiction authors change with
index-able novels? I don't know. Reading a Christie or a Hillerman
though (mysteries), I get the idea that part of the intended
author-given reading experience is the order in which the ideas of the
story are presented. This is not to say that the reader does not
control his own destiny (questions of determinism aside, okay?) in
reading. What fiction authors would go for an index-able e-text, and
which would prefer their readers to be more mentally limber without
written help?
-Sara
Kevin Foss
E. Latane) says:
>I have a number of e-texts of books, yet I have never read a book on
>my computer screen. Has anyone here actually read a 400-1000 page
>book on the screen, without any oprinted text at all? What's it like?
>Do your eyes go buggy?
Actually my father does this quite often.. when he is traveling or even at
night he pops out the same machine he uses for notes/PIM stuff and reads books
of novel length. One qualifier however, he is using a program called VR
(Virtual Reader, I think) on his HP 95, which is a MSDOS handheld machine with
a LCD style screen. This type of screen is a lot easier to read for long
periods than a standard computer monitor. However it isn't backlit, so you
do need to have sufficient light. The VR applications allows the book to
be read with the screen in a long tall format, the HP's screen already
appears more rectangular than a standard monitor.. But the effect when you
hold the computer sidewards, with the hinge through the middle, is a format
much like a paperpack book. It barely weighs any more than a weighty
tome anyways... less than most hardcovers would at least.
It isn't perfect of course. The small size of the screen and low resolution
means you often read on very few columns (~30 or so). You can get it a good
deal smaller but you risk serious strain just because of the type size.
You could of course also read them in the machine's natural wide format
if you preferred holding the computer that way and/or just reading with
more columns.
But my father has enjoyed several Gutenbergs this way, like the Verne and
Wells releases. It even remembers what 'page' he was last on...
It'd be interesting to try the same on an Apple Newton, which has many
similiar characteristics: LCD, long tall screen, handheld. Ultimately a
system like that will probably be what e-books are read on, rather than a
user sitting at a desktop computer screen.
-Kevin
------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin A. Foss -------------------- io2...@maine.maine.edu
------------------------------------------------------------
Greg-man
David E. Latane <dla...@hibbs.vcu.edu> wrote:
>
>I have a number of e-texts of books, yet I have never read a book on
>my computer screen. Has anyone here actually read a 400-1000 page
>book on the screen, without any oprinted text at all? What's it like?
>Do your eyes go buggy?
In answer to your question, I think a lot of us have read books on our
computer screens, particularly those of us who write (or are trying to
write) them and use word processors. I've read through my one completed
book (though I have many in varying stages of development) at least four
times as I have edited and re-edited it, and all on my computer screen
(MS Word for Windows 6.0--not as good as MSW 5.1 for Mac in my opinion,
but I chose price and power over ease of use back when I was in the
market to replace my 8 mhz SE--though the first 20,000 words, of which I
deleted 9,000 in editing, were done on my slow old Mac).
The funny thing is that, though I cannot bear to knock out a story or
letter without my computer, I prefer paper for writing poems (though I'll
later transfer them to disk for more convenient re-writing).
--
|----------------------------------------|
|GREG-MAN: |
| "Across the page (across the ages) the|
|moving hand of history bleeds... |
| For a kinder eye to see us, not as we|
|are, but as we dream." -- Level 42 |
|----------------------------------------|
Greg-man
> I don't know about fiction _authors,_ but as a reader, my primary
> interest in electronic books would probably be fiction. One of the big
> advantages of such books is the ability to search. In most nonfiction
> books, someone has already performed this function for me and created an
> index. For reasons not entirely clear to me, fiction publishers and
> writers are under the impression [oops] that their works wouldn't benefit
> from an index. So, if a character I don't remember shows up after a
> hiatus of 60 or 80 pages, I might have a heck of a time finding out where
> that last (or first) mention was. But not if the book were electronic.
IMHO, if the character was that forgettable, the book doesn't need an
index. It needs a better writer.
Jeffrey Friedman
>
>
>I have a number of e-texts of books, yet I have never read a book on
>my computer screen. Has anyone here actually read a 400-1000 page
>book on the screen, without any oprinted text at all? What's it like?
>Do your eyes go buggy?
>
>D. Latane'
>
>p.s., if nobody coughs up a positive example of the Joys of Reading
>300,000 words in a row in a few days on screen, I'd say hold off
>before sending in those big bucks to your broker.
>
>
I read three of the five SF novels, and most of the shorter fiction,
on ClariNet's Hugo and Nebula 1993 SF CD-ROM. I used a 486 TI notebook
with CD-ROM drive built in (by Scenario), and a Passive matrix LCD
color screen. TI now makes a notebook with a docking station and
active matrix color. I found it easy to read - less eyestrain, as
I could increase font sizes, easy to leave bookmarks, etc. LCD has it
over a normal CRT, in my opinion. A good
user interface makes a lot of difference; plain uncoded ASCII text is
less attractive to me, though I hope to find a good text browser
for that, too, someday.
For reference works and text browsing, forget hard copy.
--
Jeffrey F. Friedman
j...@ix.netcom.com
Sean Gilley
None of which are actually that interesting to the average fiction reader.
(Well, maybe the last, but still, it's certainly not the entire audience.)
On the other hand, for non-fiction books, most of them would be useful.
Which is why I believe that textbooks will be the first books to get a
wide electronic distribution.
Sean.
---
Sean L. Gilley The Information Super Highway is
sean.l...@att.com really just a rough gravel road with
614 860 9053 (h), 614 860 5743 (w) wonderful roadsigns.
John Camp
waiting for it to happen. Reading books is a complicated psychological process;
the same psychological processes may not be available to e-book readers,
making e-books inherently and irremediably unsatisfactory for some kinds of
popular reading.
The comparison to technologies like CD is a poor one. Although CD
technology is lots different than the old LP stuff, what it delivers is actually
better and simpler -- the music is bettter to most ears (and all scientific
instruments), you can program players to play the songs you want in the
order you want, you can buy a "juke box" and play random cuts off a hundred
different albums, the discs are much sturdier than LPs, smaller and easier to
handle, playable on the move, and on and on. E-books, on the other hand,
complicate and do things less well than books. There are no good readers
available yet, and if they're developed, they'll strive simpy to be as good
as paperbacks. You'll need two parts for every book -- a reader and the book.
You'll need a reader that you can sit on, stick in a pocket, get wet, fold up,
and lose -- and not have to worry about. An e-book certainly won't be
any cheaper than a paperback...
How do you browse an e-book store? There are a million intangible clues
that people take from paperbacks -- their covers (both the actual picture and
the apparent cost of them), their thickness, their placement on the shelves,
the number of them the bookstore bought; people like to read the first pages,
or flip through to the end, or just dip in to see what the text feels like. The
thing about e-boks is that they're even more rigidly linear than print books,
and linear is what Marshall McLuhan told us we'd all be shedding in the
future.
What about e-book enhancements, like the possibility of providing pictures and
music? Well, people who think readers want pictures and music simply
don't know about most readers. Most readers would be annoyed by pictures
and music. Reading is very close to dreaming -- it's an active thing, not just
a passive reception of words. Anything that breaks the trance, throws you out
of the dream, destroys the experience. For example, a woman reading a novel
may identify with the heroine (almost certainly does); but if a picture pops up
and shows the heroine with blonde hair and a Barby-doll nose, and the reader
is olive-complected with a Roman nose...everybody's got a problem.
I've been fooling around with the game Myst, and I think it's the closest thing
we've yet seen to
a real e-novel. And you wanna know something? Myst, as a novel, is
ludicrously primitive; as a movie, it's even more primitive. But even so,
it took a team of several people two years to produce. In other words,
very good e-novels are going to cost a fortune to produce, and they'll
cost a fortune to buy. And you'll still be able to get Ernest Hemingway
for $5.95, swat bugs with it, get sand in it, neglect it under the couch for
four years, and still, at the end, be able to pack it away for your grand-
children without worrying about whether their reader will be compatible...
Anyone here write an e-novel for a Tandy Color Computer?
Seriously, I took part in the early 70s "computer revolution" in newspaper
offices, and really thought that computers would be the answer to everything.
They weren't. They are very good for some things -- I think they may largely
replace general reference books -- but they are inherently bad for
others. This is much too complicated to get into here, but from that experience,
I suspect that pleasure reading is something that computers will be
bad at...
John Camp
McCarthy John
Xref: wisipc.weizmann.ac.il alt.hypertext:4118 alt.etext:727 misc.writing:20089 rec.arts.books:66644 sci.philosophy.tech:8169
References: <kiUV23C00WBN4=LJ...@andrew.cmu.edu> <omnimdiaC...@netcom.com>
<CwLD1...@unx.sas.com> <35ve0v$g...@bcarh8ab.bnr.ca> <CwLqD...@unx.sas.com>
D. Latane'
I have read about 15 books on the screen of my Macintosh PowerBook
180c. These are published for the Macintosh by the Voyager company.
In particular I read _Moby Dick_ on the screen, and I had never gotten
through it on paper. For reading, everything depends on getting the
typography right. Voyager has done an entirely adequate job, but there
are no formulas in anything they publish, and their format for pictures
isn't good - except on their CD-ROM books.
It will be even more pleasant when the screens on the Mac are
detachable from the computer.
I cannot read computer science papers on the screen. They are in
Latex output and optimize getting as much material as possible within
the page limits of some conference or other. The typical way of
reading them on-line is to ue Ghostview, which gives an image of the
printed page. This loses for two reasons.
1. The format isn't optimized for reading. It is optimized for
reducing the weight of the printed proceedings and the bulk of printed
technical reports.
2. Specifically, screen fonts don't have the resolution required to
read images of printed pages. We are reading at 72 pixels per inch
text intended to be printed at 600 pixels per inch.
We are hoping to produce the reports of our research group in a form
suitable for on-line reading. However, there don't even seem it exist
mathematical fonts of the necessary large size.
Maybe HTML2 will be good enough. The WWW fonts are ok for on-line
reading but don't support formulas in any decent way.
Harry Plantinga
> >my computer screen. Has anyone here actually read a 400-1000 page
> >book on the screen, without any oprinted text at all? What's it like?
> >Do your eyes go buggy?
>
> Actually my father does this quite often.. when he is traveling or even at
> night he pops out the same machine he uses for notes/PIM stuff and reads books
> of novel length.
>
> similiar characteristics: LCD, long tall screen, handheld. Ultimately a
> system like that will probably be what e-books are read on, rather than a
> user sitting at a desktop computer screen.
I've read and produced a few books on an Apple Newton. I haven't tried an
HP 95, but the Newton is by far the best platform for bookreading I've
see. It has a few glaring flaws, though, such as the glaring,
low-contrast screen and the $800 price tag of the software for creating
books for the Newton. I can read a book on the screen for about an hour
before my eyes go buggy. The books are also a bit slow and the font
selection is limited.
With a back-lit, high-contrast, high-resolution screen and improved
software, I think I'd prefer to read many books on a newton. The small
size is nice, considering that you can carry several books (including
large reference works) on a newton. The searching, outlining, and
cross-referencing features are great for reference works. The many freely
available books on the networks are attractive. And it would be nice to
read in bed without a light on!
--
Harry Plantinga
plan...@cs.pitt.edu
M.W. Holcroft
(Scott Bell) writes:
>In article <19940919....@almaden.ibm.com>
>mprie...@VNET.IBM.COM writes:
>>M.W.Holcroft writes:
>>>Books are regularly annotated, folded, read upside down with one hand,
>>>stuffed in pockets and bags... in general, not treated well.
>>
>> How do you treat your CDs? Or do you still listen to LPs?
I annotate my CDs too! Track 1 starts here, track 2, artist x guests here,
but finding the room is difficult, sometimes, esp. on 'various artists'
compilations. In my experience, CDs do not travel very well, so I keep them
at home, and use my (cheap) walkman. As I you might think from what I
already said about stuff being stolen, its not very entertaining having a
selection of albums stolen when they are the originals, so my mobile music is
taped...
>>>Cheap enough to loose means cheap enough not to be stolen. And, like many
>>>people I have two copies of a book... one hardback for reference, one
>>>paperback for reading/study/travel/etc
>> How would you feel about a book-reader the size and cost of a CD Walkman?
Walkman size? Really? Itsy bitsy little screen? Or is it going to read out
loud to me? Or do I have to plug in a pair of VR glasses, and see the
letters float up in front of me? Don't be silly. What is one of the major
limitations on the size of a portable computer, if not the size of a keyboard,
and the size of a screen? All your advancements in miniature engineering
aren't going to make the size demands of these decrease. You'd have to
replace the keyboard with a pen (and then meet all the extra processing
requirement generated by the need to interpret handwriting) and the screen
would probably have to be a fair size (A5? A4) before you could have decent
looking fonts, and room to annotate.
>> And books at, say, $4 a shot? (assuming a 300% markup for royalties and
>> distribution)
Why aren't CD based games any cheaper than disk based ones? Nor is there
much of a gap in the pricing of games for the Atari Jaguar / 3DO platforms.
CD based stuff is sold on a performance/desirability angle, and as such
manufaturers want as much $ as possible out of it. Why are we to suspect
that their motives will be different for books?
How would I feel about someone stealing my reader? And, to make the book
reader as useful as you people seem to think it is, it should be included in
a PDA, with other 'computer' facilites such as would be necessary to
annotate, search, cross-reference; secondary (to the CD drive) storage would
be necessary to store the annotations (battery backed RAM? Disk?). You want
to cross reference you need other sources. Are you going to have multiple
volumes per CD? Who chooses what goes on the CD, remembering that the large
record companies (and their parent organisations - philips, sony, et l - are
not happy about allowing CD pressing technologies to reach a wide audience)?
Do you have to make up these CDs yourself? More equipment. Or are you
going to have multiple drives? Are people going to have to carry round
a number of CD based books? All in order to allow them to cross-reference?
Now, how would I feel about someone stealing my PDA, with all my other
personal info on it? And what about the verifications needed for digital
cash? My signature is going to be stored on something like this. You know,
I don't need to write my credit card details in my books. Or are we
interested in carrying around multiple pieces of kit?
>>>> Dare one say: Save the trees!? The belief you annunciate, of course,
>>>> is simply speculation.
>>>Trees grow. Oil does not. At least not in any appreciably useful time
>>>period. Nor does silicon. Nor gold. Nor silver... and so on and so on.
>> "Conserve the silicon!" Let me know when you run low, and I'll sell you a
>> cubic mile of the Sahara at a reasonable price. Removing silicon from
So, you have the real estate rights to the sahara? I wasn't talking about
running out of silicon. But of course, you realised that, otherwise
you'd be stupid. But how long is silicon going to be a viable material in
high powered, miniature electronics?
>> the environment does considerably less harm than deforestation does. Sand
>> is not a contributing member of the biosphere.
We aren't talking about deforestation. We are talking about sustainable
forestry such as takes place around the world.
What about the plastic? You have a process to bypass oil in the production
of plastic? What about the precious metals used in the circuits? What about
the stuff used to make the ICs and th ASICs and the processors? Make em all
out of sand? What do you do, beat it with a (large) hammer, till it turns to
some useable material? What about the aluminium used in CDs, or silver, or
gold in the masters? How are you going to mine it? Environmentally
friendly, as-yet undiscovered new ways? How is it shifted around? What
happens to the areas that were once mines? What are you going to do about
the subsidence caused by mines? What about the destruction of the areas
surrounding the mines die to increased traffic/pollution (dust/fumes/slag)?
Surely you know about the mining of aluminium in Brazil? What are you going
to propose to make the mining process safer for the miners? (Am I going to
hear cries of "Save the Miners! My god, this guy's a kook!") How do you
propose, in a market led, consumerist society where price is the only value
of a thing, stop other countries using child labour and appalling procedures
(safety standards) from 'producing' the stuff cheaper than your regulated
industries? Which is what we've seen in the UK, where we have a coal
industry managed by a hostile government that has allowed electricity
companies to buy from the cheapest sources (incl. transportation half way
across the world!) which are third world countries which use child miners
(minor miners?). Which I find absolutely enraging.
What about the lacquer used to surround the information holding interior of a
CD? What about the plastic used to produce the case? Does it rot? Is it
easy to produce? Are you going to make it out of sand as well? And you
still need to print the covers, so you still need to 'farm' the trees to
produce the paper. What about the batteries, and the toxic chemicals held
within them? What about the waste of duplication of having a screen produce
light when there is already light falling onto it?
Its funny, I always had this vision of 'books' being available across some
'radio' link, from central depositories (like the british library or the
library of congress), more or less for free, with every volume (in the
world?) available, with high speed links localised between the main sites and
the local cell handlers, with cross referencing handled by remote, hugely
powerful search engines. With data transmission of this kind entirely linked
to the PT systems, maybe some kind of cellular telephone network. With
authors paid royalties every time someone looked up their book, where the
rates of royalties depend on whether they just read it, or used it in a cross
reference of their own. With no production costs at all, other than document
processing the thing and uploading it, to encourage the production and
presentation of information direct fom the people who are producing it.
Without the kind of resource hungry distribution system that you seem to
want, without the kind of information hierarchy that you would create. Why
go for a replication/replacement of the 'book' system, with somethiing almost
exactly equivalent, apart from the presentation?
>Then why is it( sand ) here, and not man-made? It must provide some
>type
Sand performs a vital role in the prevention of coastal erosion. But you
can look it up yourself.
>>>Paper books rot, decompose. And I do not through them away; it's a good
>>You obviously didn't read my earlier post (Title was : Re: Reading).
>>Core drills from landfill sites indicate that organic matter does _not_
>>decompose in dump sites. There isn't enough aeration to allow it. They've
>>drilled deep and pulled up dessicated heads of lettuce, and perfectly
I am not looking for the moral high ground, nor am I looking to compost my
books. However, current methods of waste handling are barmy... But! If the
stuff does not rot, how come we're having problems with the gasses produced
underground, causing explosions, and long burning/ hard to put out fires?
All your wet lettuces would put out any fires. Unless your non rotting paper
is the fuel they're using, and not the gas by-products of decomposition....
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In article <omnimdiaC...@netcom.com>, omni...@netcom.com (OmniMedia)
writes:
|> To me, the biggest appeal will occur when inexpensive, rugged, high-rez,
|> book size computers hit the market with large storage capacity.Imagine such
|> a computer, the size of a paperback or a little larger, holding 1-2 Gb of
|> books. This would hold approximately 1000+ books (depending on their size
|> and extent of multimedia extensions).
Like pictures!!!
|> You could go on travel and bring your
|> whole library with you! Or, you can take it to bed and you won't necessarily
|> need a reading light!
Don't forget to put them away somewhere safe, cause if you fall asleep with
one in bed with you... snap
|> Not only that, these books will have the aforementioned
|> extra features that paperbooks don't have.
Like affordability... desirability.... 'steal'ability....
Nice cheap things, that I'd be really comfortable taking onto the train with
me and travelling into Liverpool, or reading on a bus passing through
Moss-Side, Manchester.... take onto the beach with me, and expose to sand and
salt water, and kids, and sun tan lotion, and beach balls, and frisbees, and
other people on the beach... take to rio with me, walk into around New
Orleans with...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In article <35vvsl$b...@rand.org>, chi...@swift.rand.org (Jim Chiesa) writes:
>
> I don't know about fiction _authors,_ but as a reader, my primary
> interest in electronic books would probably be fiction. One of the big
> advantages of such books is the ability to search. In most nonfiction
> books, someone has already performed this function for me and created an
> index. For reasons not entirely clear to me, fiction publishers and
> writers are under the impression [oops] that their works wouldn't benefit
> from an index. So, if a character I don't remember shows up after a
> hiatus of 60 or 80 pages, I might have a heck of a time finding out where
> that last (or first) mention was. But not if the book were electronic.
>
> -- Jim C.
Improve your reading technique.... learn to concntrate.... take it
seriously... read someone who writes 'real' characters, then you wouldn't
forget about them... %^>
Fiction is linear. It is a story that has a beginning and an end, and it
progresses the way the author intended. If you can't cope with it that way
it is either bad fiction, or you have bad reading skills. Or you are too
busy thinking what fun you could have if it were on an electronic media :)
OmniMedia
>Its funny, I always had this vision of 'books' being available across some
>'radio' link, from central depositories (like the british library or the
>library of congress), more or less for free, with every volume (in the
>world?) available, with high speed links localised between the main sites and
>the local cell handlers, with cross referencing handled by remote, hugely
>powerful search engines. With data transmission of this kind entirely linked
>to the PT systems, maybe some kind of cellular telephone network. With
>authors paid royalties every time someone looked up their book, where the
>rates of royalties depend on whether they just read it, or used it in a cross
>reference of their own. With no production costs at all, other than document
>processing the thing and uploading it, to encourage the production and
>presentation of information direct fom the people who are producing it.
>Without the kind of resource hungry distribution system that you seem to
>want, without the kind of information hierarchy that you would create. Why
>go for a replication/replacement of the 'book' system, with somethiing almost
>exactly equivalent, apart from the presentation?
Except for your last sentence or two, I have the same vision as you. As long
as authors are guaranteed their royalties for use of their works, what you
propose makes a lot of sense in the long run. To get to that point requires
a lot of new and expensive infrastructure and some technological developments.
I'd say we are realistically 15-30 years from this. In the meantime, the
e-book business will continue to grow, with books distributed either on media
like CD-ROMs and its successors, and/or transfered over the networks. Also in
the meantime, my company hopes to further encourage, via the profit motive,
the conversion of older public domain works into *freely* available ASCII text
which will form the nucleus behind this revolution (witness Project Gutenberg.)
David Swarbrick
jt...@andrew.cmu.edu "Jackson Tam" writes:
>
>In order for electronic books to dominate, don't they have to provide
>something that goes beyond the paper book? (not superficial features
>like high-lighting).
>
Why must they provide something more? They can be produced and supplied
much more cheaply and flexibly. May that not be enough?
The reading facilities provided by your average PC leave much to be desired
as yet, but if that changes I would myself resist all temptation to
complicate electronic text (hyper text and so on).
--
David Swarbrick | Just Mooting UK Law On-line
Swarbrick & Co, Solicitors | +44 (0)484 401139 (24 hrs <=v.32bis)
22 Bradford Road Brighouse HD6 1RW|
Telephone [01484] 722531 | da...@swarb.demon.co.uk
Abdul Malik Said
paper books are currently the best way to read for most people, even
computer geeks :-)
besides being portable, versatile, and easily referenced, they don't
strain your eyes as much as many bright computer screens do.
it's libraries full of books that are quite useless - so much wasted paper
when most people could find what they want faster and more concisely with
the info stored.
--
~~~~~~~~ || || ~~~~~~~~
------------- ((MALIK)) --------------
[[[[[[[[[ ---um...@ccu.umanitoba.ca---]]]]]]]]]]
once more: PULP HEMP NOT TREES
Tony Geraghty
da...@swarb.demon.co.uk "David Swarbrick" writes:
> In article <kiUV23C00WBN4=LJ...@andrew.cmu.edu>
> jt...@andrew.cmu.edu "Jackson Tam" writes:
>
> >
> >In order for electronic books to dominate, don't they have to provide
> >something that goes beyond the paper book? (not superficial features
> >like high-lighting).
> >
> Why must they provide something more? They can be produced and supplied
> much more cheaply and flexibly. May that not be enough?
If electronic books don't provide additional facilities all you have
is a reader and a text file of some description. You will also need
a power source to read the text, which represents an additional cost
on top of the original purchase price. This does not, as far as I
am concerned, provide an incentive to switch from a paper book.
If my past experience with calculators is anything to go by, spilling
tea on a reader or dropping it in the bath or on the floor would mean
having to buy a replacement reader (more cost) which you don't
always get with paper books. Nor do you have the problem of the
batteries dying at inconvenient times :-)
And will the e-books I buy today be readable in 20 years ? The oldest
book on my shelves is as easily read today as it was when printed in
1801; I'm not sure that the electronic version of a book published
today will be.
I like paper books, and find reading books on my pc is tiring and
irritating. I would however be happy to have an e-book format for
reference works, but would always choose a paper version for
everything else.
--
Tony Geraghty to...@hibou.demon.co.uk
mprie...@vnet.ibm.com
>> How do you treat your CDs? Or do you still listen to LPs?
>already said about stuff being stolen, its not very entertaining having
>taped...
If you only wanted to pack a few books (rather than an entire library)
I'm sure you could transfer them to disk, and save the CD at home as
the original. I doubt there'd be as big a market in stolen books,
though, as there is in stolen music. Unless reading suddenly becomes
"cool", CD-books aren't likely to become a major theft target.
>>> How would you feel about a book-reader the size and cost of a CD Walkan?
>Walkman size? Really? Itsy bitsy little screen? Or is it going to rea out
No. If the player is half the size of a paperback, the screen could
fold open to normal paperback page size.
>loud to me? Or do I have to plug in a pair of VR glasses, and see the
>letters float up in front of me? Don't be silly. What is one of the maor
I suggested exactly that option in another post. You can get a heads-up
display now for sunglasses and a tiny TV receiver (so you can watch TV
out of the corner of your eye while walking in the park). This system
obviously isn't optimized for reading text, but I see no reason why it
couldn't be adapted. Potentially a very interesting development, not
at all silly.
>limitations on the size of a portable computer, if not the size of a
>keyboard, and the size of a screen?
Why on earth would a keyboard be associated with it? Do you bring a
typewriter with you when you read in the park?
>All your advancements in miniature engineerin
>aren't going to make the size demands of these decrease. You'd have to
>replace the keyboard with a pen (and then meet all the extra processing
Gosh, like half-a-dozen palmtops already in the market today? Are you
saying this won't work? It already does!
>requirement generated by the need to interpret handwriting)
The requirements are piddling. If you find the handwriting interpretor
unreliable, switch it off: you can still annotate, you just can't do
searches on your note text. You couldn't with paper, either.
>and the scren
>would probably have to be a fair size (A5? A4) before you could have decent
>looking fonts, and room to annotate.
The screen would have to be the size of a paperback page before it had
the same display area as a paperback page. You probably wouldn't go
for OED fontsize here, but standard pulp paperback fonts should be
perfectly legible.
>Why aren't CD based games any cheaper than disk based ones? Nor is ther
Because the cost of the medium is dirt cheap in both cases, and the major
cost is development of the game. In publishing, the medium is more
expensive, and the cost of the writing is amortized over a larger
production run (talking mass-market here). I am _not_ comparing CD's
with floppy disks. I am comparing CD's with paper books. If you had
been paying attention, you would be doing the same.
>CD based stuff is sold on a performance/desirability angle, and as such
>manufaturers want as much $ as possible out of it. Why are we to suspec
>that their motives will be different for books?
You are right, manufacturers will sell for as high as they can get away
with. My feeling was that a 300% markup (as opposed to the 5% to 30%
they get today) would be as much as they can get away with. That gives
you a price of $4.00.
>How would I feel about someone stealing my reader? And, to make the boo
You really are scared of it being stolen, aren't you? Maybe I'm spoiled
by living in Canada. Fine, we'll keep a special hardcopy mailorder
store open for people who are afraid their $50 CD Reader will get stolen.
>reader as useful as you people seem to think it is, it should be include in
>a PDA, with other 'computer' facilites such as would be necessary to
...Long list of various functions that reader will need to have (though
why the reader will need them, since it is replacing books which don't
have them, is a curiously neglected question) deleted ...
>Do you have to make up these CDs yourself? More equipment. Or are you
>going to have multiple drives? Are people going to have to carry round
>a number of CD based books? All in order to allow them to cross-referene?
Fine! They can't cross-reference except with books on the same disk
(such as the philosophical libraries you can have custom assembled and
pressed for you, on CD, now). I never suggested anything else. You
don't think even limited cross-referencing is a telling advantage over paper?
>Now, how would I feel about someone stealing my PDA, with all my other
>personal info on it? And what about the verifications needed for digita
I'd feel like they stole my wallet! Gosh, considering I was keeping
everything plus the kitchen sink in that thing, they just stole my house!
How about we restrict the discussion to electronic books?
>you'd be stupid. But how long is silicon going to be a viable material n
>high powered, miniature electronics?
Probably not forever. They'll switch to growing crystals, or
genetically engineered biochips. I can't imagine them moving to a
more expensive, less available material. The industry is too cost
competitive for that.
>We aren't talking about deforestation. We are talking about sustainable
>forestry such as takes place around the world.
I live in Canada. Trust me, sustainable forestry has its problems.
Ever heard of Clayoquot sound? Temagami? The paper industry is not
some squeaky-clean paragon of environmental virtue.
...long moral diatribe against the evils of the capitalist production
machine, which kills women and children and destroys Brazil, deleted
for brevity...
>within them? What about the waste of duplication of having a screen prouce
>light when there is already light falling onto it?
I'll actually respond to this: backlit LCD. Turn on the light when
you need to read in the dark. Otherwise don't.
As for the rest of it: the logging industry is not a saint. The
abuses you document do exist, and I stand with you in condemning them.
I also think these kind of abuses will exist in any industry where there
is money to be made. We can fight them with environmental legislation
and human rights campaigns. But if you fight these abuses by eliminating
every industry that has them, that leaves you with homeopathic farmers
and not much else. And the computer industry has this advantage over the
paper industry: the same information takes up less volume. Even sticking
with CD's over an info distribution system (as you suggest below) they
are more efficient and less costly. By definition, they make fewer
demands on the resources of this planet.
>Its funny, I always had this vision of 'books' being available across some
>'radio' link, from central depositories (like the british library or the
>library of congress), more or less for free, with every volume (in the
>world?) available, with high speed links localised between the main site and
...
>Without the kind of resource hungry distribution system that you seem to
>want, without the kind of information hierarchy that you would create. Why
>go for a replication/replacement of the 'book' system, with somethiing almost
>exactly equivalent, apart from the presentation?
This sounds like a fine idea, though I doubt radio links are viable.
I chose CD's simply because the distribution system exists today, and
it solved the problem of migrating the current author/publisher,
purchase/royalties system to a different platform. I am sure other
solutions exist, I simply went for the quickest, cheapest, most
readily available solution, to prove my point: that electronic books
are possible with today's technology. That a better system might be
developed in the future, I have no argument with. I endorse it with
all my heart.
In response to Jim C., you write:
>Fiction is linear. It is a story that has a beginning and an end, and i
>progresses the way the author intended. If you can't cope with it that ay
>it is either bad fiction, or you have bad reading skills. Or you are to
>busy thinking what fun you could have if it were on an electronic media )
Your summation is simplistic. Read Joyce's _Ulysses_ without an index
or appendix. This book would have been a _lot_ more fun to read with
hypertext commentary (though I was _not_ busy thinking that when I
read it, since I didn't know what hypertext was). I have good reading
skills, and Joyce is considered an excellent author.
Michael Priestley
mprie...@vnet.ibm.com
Disclaimer: speaking on my own behalf, not IBM's.
McCarthy John
On the other hand, for non-fiction books, most of them would
be useful. Which is why I believe that textbooks will be
the first books to get a wide electronic distribution.
Probably several hundred novels have gotten wide electronic
distribution and, so far as I know, no textbooks.
John Ockerbloom
McCarthy John <j...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> wrote:
>Probably several hundred novels have gotten wide electronic
>distribution and, so far as I know, no textbooks.
I don't know of any previously published textbooks that have been
distributed electronically. I have link to at least one electronic
textbook on my on-line books page: _Understanding OSI_. It was
submitted for publication and then withdrawn.
And yes, there are many more novels there: hundreds, as you say. Most
of them are public domain (and the others are there with permission of
the authors). Part of the problem may be that few
textbooks still worth using are in the public domain.
(But-- The *original* 1918 edition of Strunk's _Elements of Style_ is
PD by now in the US, and will be PD most other places in a couple of
years. If anyone has access to a copy of that edition,
it would be a wonderful book to have on-line.)
John Ockerbloom
(On-line books page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu:8001/Web/books.html)
--
==========================================================================
ocker...@cs.cmu.edu 1603 Beechwood Blvd., Pittsburgh PA 15217
Anne Sullivan
> You'll need a reader that you can sit on, stick in a pocket, get wet, fold up,
> and lose -- and not have to worry about. An e-book certainly won't be
> any cheaper than a paperback...
...
> cost a fortune to buy. And you'll still be able to get Ernest Hemingway
> for $5.95, swat bugs with it, get sand in it, neglect it under the couch for
> four years, and still, at the end, be able to pack it away for your grand-
> children without worrying about whether their reader will be compatible...
Exactly. Whether my books will last until my grandchildren's time is not important.
Will they last until dinner? Here in Phoenix it is often 110 F in the summer and
I throw a book in the car that will sit there all afternoon in the sun while
I run errands. I want something to read when I stop to eat dinner out.
The book and reader have to survive that. I'm not carrying them into every stop
I make.
I set the thermostat in my house at 82 F in the summer to keep the electric bill
reasonable. Will the reader and books survive?
This problem has to get solved before I'd shell out for a reader.
Anne Sullivan
Kevin Gallagher
OmniMedia <omni...@netcom.com> wrote:
>I can understand the nostalgia for paper books.
Many years ago, at least 20 years or more I am sure, Isaac Asimov wrote a
short story (sorry, I can't remember the title) about a future time in which
written work was exclusively marketed via electronic media. He described the
world we seem to be heading for. But then something happens in the story
which radically changes things. Someone came up with a bright idea and
"invented" the hardcopy paper book! Needless to say, this new invention was
the rage. Soon, everyone wanted hardcopy versions of their favorite books.
The marketing of books with soft locks will fail. The failure of electronic
copy protection schemes in the software marketplace should make this obvious.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kevin Gallagher kgal...@spd.dsccc.com
DSC Communications Corporation Addr: MS 152, 1000 Coit Rd, Plano, TX 75075
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean Gilley
McCarthy John <j...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> wrote:
Then let me rephrase:
I believe that the first books to be generally sold and marketed
(which is what I thought we were talking about) for electronic
distribution will be textbooks. (In fact, if one includes
encylopedias, this is already true.)
In fact, I just read an article a few days ago in (probably)
local press that talked about how great electronic publishing
of textbooks is, with a few particulars about how it is
currently being done.
Oh the few hundred novels with a wide electronic distribution,
how many have an associated cost? (Other than download cost,
etc.) I know of one -- there is some guy on Compuserve who
couldn't get his novel published and gave up trying, instead
opting for a distribution of the novel via Compuserve.
Are there other examples of fiction that the reader has to
pay for, that exclusively use electronic distribution? Or that
use it to a wide extent?
Hugh LaMaster
How about "An introduction to High Performance Computing" in
Hypertext Web/HTML format, online since Supercomputing '93 (November
of 1993):
http://csep1.phy.ornl.gov/csep.html
Also, more recently available in PostScript form (big files, etc)
by chapter in the directory:
ftp://compsci.cas.vanderbilt.edu/CSEP/BOOK_PS
--
Hugh LaMaster, M/S 233-9, UUCP: ames!lamaster
NASA Ames Research Center Internet: lama...@ames.arc.nasa.gov
Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 Or: lama...@george.arc.nasa.gov
Phone: 415/604-1056 #include <std_disclaimer.h>
Eugene N. Miya
(Shoshana Edwards) wrote:
SE> Reading a book is a visceral, tactile experience. I don't know of anyone
^^^^^^^
PF>When I have a beautiful book, I find myself running my fingers across the
PF>pages, feeling the texture of the paper and the printing.
PF>Peter Flueckiger
PF>flue...@deshaw.com
In article <3607pj$c...@mercury.interpath.net> ali...@mercury.interpath.net
(Alan R. Light) writes:
ARL>Personally, I predict that people will never give up the parchments
...
ARL>Yes, there will always be a market for clay tablets,
ARL>though stone is more durable.
...
ARL>Well, I'm off to paint a rock now.
I have just finished a book about the Higgs Boson. Somewhere in the middle
was a nice quote on calibration which I did not highlight or dog ear.
I am now trying to relocate it. It is frustrating. If I could search
the paper version as fast as a machine, I would appreciate paper better.
It's a technical book, and a technical issue. On the other hand, I don't have
to worry about my book running down a battery.
I liked the feel of slide rules of old. I still have two. Some where.
I have a dead HP-41C (one of the first) and a newer HP something or other
(still RPN). Somewhere out there, a few companies are still making
slide rules. Why? They lose precision on the right side of the scale.
The other day the new Voyager catalog came. I see Minsky's SoM is in there
and not one by THREE of Don Norman's books come on ONE CD. Time to buy to CD
drive, and I have resisted all this time. I view these books on disk as
experiments. I don't believe that books will go the way of the slide rule,
but printers are smart to watch the analogy and technology developments.
These transition times are the most uncomfortable. I doubt many people
these days appreciate slide rules.
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
Associate Editor, Software and Publication Reviews
Scientific Programming
{uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
Seeking Books to buy: Bongard, Pattern Recognition
3 down 1 to go.
Eugene N. Miya
>How do you browse an e-book store?
Funny you mention that: I was just asked by my friends at CLB to to test
this experiment:
http://www.clbooks.com/
>What about e-book enhancements, like the possibility of providing pictures and
>music?
This is all on the threshold of starting. It's beginning today.
I mean TODAY.
>Seriously, I took part in the early 70s "computer revolution" in newspaper
>offices, and really thought that computers would be the answer to everything.
>They weren't. They are very good for some things -- I think they may largely
>replace general reference books -- but they are inherently bad for
>others.
I agree.
>I suspect that pleasure reading is something that computers will be
>bad at...
I doubt it will all be bad, just bad for certain things; just like
coloring old B&W movies.
--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
Resident Cynic, Rock of Ages Home for Retired Hackers
{uunet,mailrus,other gateways}!ames!eugene
My 3rd favorite use of a flame thrower is "Fahrenheit 451."
A Ref: Uncommon Sense, Alan Cromer, Oxford Univ. Press, 1993.
Hugh LaMaster
|> In article <JMC.94Se...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>,
|> McCarthy John <j...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> wrote:
|> >Probably several hundred novels have gotten wide electronic
|> >distribution and, so far as I know, no textbooks.
|>
|> I don't know of any previously published textbooks that have been
|> distributed electronically. I have link to at least one electronic
|> textbook on my on-line books page: _Understanding OSI_. It was
|> submitted for publication and then withdrawn.
Yes, thanks for pointing this one out. Definitely a "regular"
textbook. Users of this book really should thank the author
for making it available:
http://www.salford.ac.uk/docs/depts/iti/books/osi.html
Del Freeman
On Thu, 29 Sep 1994, Sean Gilley wrote:
> In article <JMC.94Se...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>,
> McCarthy John <j...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> wrote:
> >In another triumph of theory over experience Sean Gilley wrote:
> >
> > On the other hand, for non-fiction books, most of them would
> > be useful. Which is why I believe that textbooks will be
> > the first books to get a wide electronic distribution.
My husband, David, who is the guy who publishes our e-mag, agrees with
you on this. It makes perfect sense to me, as well.
> >
> >Probably several hundred novels have gotten wide electronic
> >distribution and, so far as I know, no textbooks.
> >
>
> Then let me rephrase:
>
> I believe that the first books to be generally sold and marketed
> (which is what I thought we were talking about) for electronic
> distribution will be textbooks. (In fact, if one includes
> encylopedias, this is already true.)
>
> In fact, I just read an article a few days ago in (probably)
> local press that talked about how great electronic publishing
> of textbooks is, with a few particulars about how it is
> currently being done.
>
> Oh the few hundred novels with a wide electronic distribution,
> how many have an associated cost? (Other than download cost,
> etc.) I know of one -- there is some guy on Compuserve who
> couldn't get his novel published and gave up trying, instead
> opting for a distribution of the novel via Compuserve.
>
> Are there other examples of fiction that the reader has to
> pay for, that exclusively use electronic distribution? Or that
> use it to a wide extent?
A fellow named John Galuzka began something called Serrendippity
Publishing several years ago. He offers books on disk for a fee and
several authors have listed their full-length books with him for sale.
I'm sure there must be tons of others, huh? - Del
Ted Samsel
plastics & whatnot in these here newfangled electric books, we'll
have to have our book burnings at a hazardous waste incinerator
rather than in our back yard bbq pit!"
"Have no fear, young Ignatz! In the future, every megablock will have
their own hazardous waste incinerator."
--
Ted Samsel....tejas@infi.net.com/bh...@freenet-in-a.cwru.edu...
"driving a Hudson Hornet on the information superhighway"
Eugene N. Miya
John McCarthy <j...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il> wrote:
>Probably several hundred novels have gotten wide electronic
>distribution and, so far as I know, no textbooks.
In the early 1980s, I was asked by NASA to survey the current literature
on parallel computing. Among other things I noticed that many people wrote
surveys about parallel computing and a lot more people ignored them.
I noted major errors in the survey papers published in that time, and
annotations about quality (especially anonymous annotations) were useful.
So I decided that my survey to avoid the pitfalls of these other works
would be in machine readable form ready for conversion into hypermedia.
Along the way I in fact encountered other who were faced with the same
task as me, but they went paper and that did not include annotation:
%A Ulrike Bernutat-Buchmann
%A Dietmar Rudolph
%A Karl-Heinz ScholBer
%T Parallel Computing I Eine Bibliographie
%I Rechenzentrum und Ruhr-Universitat Bochum
%D September 1983
%O ISSN: 0723-2187
%X An extremely large printed bibliography on the subject. It is probably
in a machine readable form. It has over 5000 entries, many in European
languages. Should try to merge it with this list. It does not appear
to have annotations, does have a cross reference list, does have keywords
but they are not printed.
My work is now almost six times bigger. It's not quite a text book.
I started before bibtex, Macs, Hypercard, etc. and my work is drawing to
a close. I discovered a cobbler's children syndrome in CS and surrounding
technologies. I've collected request letterheads (this was required of me
by Prentice-Hall the original copyright holder of my kernel references)
from very amusing places, including agencies which don't exist.
All in all it's been fun, but I plan to stop next March.
%A E. N. Miya
%T Multiprocessor/Distributed Processing Bibliography
%J Computer Architecture News
%I ACM SIGARCH
%V 13
%N 1
%D March 1985
%P 27-29
%K Annotated bibliography, computer system architecture, multicomputers,
multiprocessor software, networks, operating systems, parallel processing,
parallel algorithms, programming languages, supercomputers,
vector processing, cellular automata, fault-tolerant computers,
some digital optical computing, some neural networks, simulated annealing,
concurrent, communications, interconnection,
%X Notice of this work. Itself. Quality: no comment.
Also short note published in NASA Tech Briefs vol. 12, no. 2, Feb. 1988,
pp. 62. Also referenced in Hennessy & Patterson pages 589-590.
About an earlier unmaintained version. TM-86000 and ARC-11568.
Maintaining for ten years with constant updates (trying to be complete
but not succeeding). Limited verification against bibliographic systems
(this is better than DIALOG). Storing comments from colleagues
(DIALOG can't do this.) Rehash sections on a Sequent as a test of parallel
search (this work exhibits unitary speed-up). 8^).
The attempt is to collect respected comments as well as references.
Yearly net posting results hopefully updated "grequired" and "grecommended"
search fields. Attempted to be comprehensive up to 1989.
$Revision:$ $Date:$
Printing this on paper is silly.
And then there is the SIGGRAPH Interactive Conference Proceedings
which runs on NeXT boxes: very interesting..... The interaction with
multiple media like Mathematica is useful.
Serious textbooks are merely a matter of time. I'd suggest measured in
weeks and months rather than years. The advantages to Errata and Addenda
are significant. As an undergrad I discovered an error in a double integral
in a meteorology text which essentially got me into grad school. Thousands
of textbooks were wrong. Knuth in your own Dept. at Stanford (the fourth
in this post) of course also pays for corrections. Pratt, also in your
SU dept. also has bemoamed publisher decisions on updates. Texts have
advantages, but the authors have not made the leap.
Gary Merrill
|> The marketing of books with soft locks will fail. The failure of electronic
|> copy protection schemes in the software marketplace should make this obvious.
I fully agree with this. But of course this has not seemed to slow
down either the marketing or the sales of software at all.
--
Gary H. Merrill [Principal Systems Developer, Compiler and Tools Division]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC 27513 / (919) 677-8000
sas...@theseus.unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm
RUSSELL MILLS
>In article <365urs$i...@cedar.mr.net> jc...@mr.net (John Camp) writes:
>>How do you browse an e-book store?
>Funny you mention that: I was just asked by my friends at CLB to to test
>this experiment:
> http://www.clbooks.com/
>>What about e-book enhancements, like the possibility of providing pictures and
>>music?
>This is all on the threshold of starting. It's beginning today.
>I mean TODAY.
When I read a book (one I own, that is), I underline, scribble in the
margins, write notes on the endpapers, dog-ear some of the page, and
generally alter the book. When I'm done, I have not only the original text
but my annotations, easy to correlate, in a form that I can put in my
pocket and use anywhere. All the "electronic books" that I have seen are
much clumsier, to say nothing of requiring expensive and unreliable
equipment to use.
Jeffrey A. Del Col
>In article <omnimdiaC...@netcom.com>,
>OmniMedia <omni...@netcom.com> wrote:
>>I can understand the nostalgia for paper books.
>
Only technocrats would think nostalgia has anything to do with it.
I have been reading this thread for over the past week or so and have been
intrigued to see that much of it centered on what format the software
and hardware would take, which system was to be preferred, which would
dominate, which would be sent to the dustbin of cybernetic oblivion, etc.
The great thing about books is that the format is so damned conservative
and practical that it hasn't become obsolete and is unlikely to do so.
Electronic books will never replace the printed page unless software and
hardware development are frozen, something that is or ought to be
anathema to the entreprenurial spirit of cyberland.
Who on earth would invest in electronic libraries that might become
unreadable with changes in hardware and software, for which spare parts,
repairs and software support would disappear?
For an example of this problem read the introduction to Isaiah Berlin's
recent book THE MAGUS OF THE NORTH. The editor of that volume feared
that he might not be able to complete the work because many of
Berlin's notes were recorded on Dictabelts, an obsolete dictation
recording method. He had to consult experts at the British National
Science Museum to find a working Dictabelt machine.
Obsolesence is a problem for rapidly advancing technology, not for
the printed page.
J. Del Col
Gary Merrill
In article <36h3ir$c...@usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu>, br...@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Jeffrey A. Del Col) writes:
Something roughly equivalent to ...
|> The great thing about [stone tablets] is that the format is so damned
|> conservative and practical that it hasn't become obsolete and is
|> unlikely to do so.
|>
|> Who on earth would invest in [paper] libraries that might become
|> unreadable with changes in [environment, or over time], for which
|> [the original printing technology] would disappear?
|>
|> Obsolesence is a problem for rapidly advancing technology, not for
|> [carved stone].
Derek Davis
(RUSSELL MILLS) wrote:
> When I read a book (one I own, that is), I underline, scribble in the
> margins, write notes on the endpapers, dog-ear some of the page, and
> generally alter the book. When I'm done, I have not only the original text
> but my annotations, easy to correlate, in a form that I can put in my
> pocket and use anywhere. All the "electronic books" that I have seen are
> much clumsier, to say nothing of requiring expensive and unreliable
> equipment to use.
I have the opposite problem. I tend to think of a book as sacred and never
wnat to make a mark in it. But what do I care if I crayon up an e-text? I
can erase it tomorrow or hide the notes. (Would you ever want to read your
old college notes again? Shiver...)
--
Derek Davis
lda...@dolphin.upenn.edu
"A little rain never hurt no one"--Tom Waits
Gary Benson
>I liked the feel of slide rules of old. I still have two. Some where.
>I have a dead HP-41C (one of the first) and a newer HP something or other
>(still RPN). Somewhere out there, a few companies are still making
>slide rules. Why? They lose precision on the right side of the scale.
>
>These transition times are the most uncomfortable. I doubt many people
>these days appreciate slide rules.
>
>--eugene miya, NASA Ames Research Center, eug...@orville.nas.nasa.gov
In tech school, way back in 1975, we had a savvy math teacher who directed
us in a "slipstick bee" each Friday. He would have us put our heads down,
while he wrote an equation on the board. He would then calculate the result on
his TI 45. When he had the answer, he'd let us raise our heads, and
---Zwisshhh, slish, sippp, slllssssshhhhh, finally a person thought they had
the answer and would stand up. If it was correct to the same number of
decimal places the TI gave, that side of the room got a point. If it was off
by even .00000001, the other team got a chance. Those were exciting
contests, and partly because we all knew we were on the cusp.
For final exams, we were the first class at Madison Area Technical College
(MATC) to be allowed to bring in our calculators. But for some problems, we
were not allowed to use them. Instead, we had to use the old slide rule.
Many times, I would finish a test, dig out my little screwdriver, adjust the
scales, and then re-check my work.
I love slide rules, and yet I only look at my old Versalog once a month or so.
--
Gary Benson-_-_-_-_...@tc.fluke.com_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Inventions reached their limit long ago, and I see no hope for further
development. -Julius Frontinus, 1st century AD
McCarthy John
Rachel Kadel
Hmm, someone just asserted that readers don't want pictures. While I can
probably agree that readers don't want sound, I, at least, DO want
pictures. I want the RIGHT pictures. For example, an edition of Rudyard
Kipling's Just So Stories with the original illustrations will make me
happy. An edition of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories without
illustrations will make me substantially less happy. With rare possible
exceptions (for example, if Arthur Rackham did it), an edition of Rudyard
Kipling's Just So Stories with new illustrations would make me unhappy.
This has relatively little to do with e-books versus paper books -- paper
books often do have illustrations, with the number and quality of the
illustrations partially dependent on the increased cost of illustrating.
The increased cost of illustrating would to some extent carry over to
e-books -- a heavily illustrated e-book will take up far more disk space
and require more sophisticated software and a faster computer with more
ram to work as nicely as an unillustrated e-book. Illustrations are
actually a way that ebooks and paperbooks are similar.
Rachel
McCarthy John
Xref: wisipc.weizmann.ac.il alt.hypertext:4187 alt.etext:774 misc.writing:20487 rec.arts.books:67122 sci.philosophy.tech:8221
References: <kiUV23C00WBN4=LJ...@andrew.cmu.edu> <35v26s$3...@frame.frame.com>
<CwLu4...@nntpa.cb.att.com> <JMC.94Se...@nemesis.wisdom.weizmann.ac.il>
Distribution: na
Organization: AT&T Bell Labs, Columbus Ohio.
Nntp-Posting-Host: slgsun.cb.att.com
Lines: 40
Then let me rephrase:
Sean.
The revised version could be true. I was thinking about the Voyager
electronic books which are distributed physically. I expect they'll
Anders Thulin
>
>my computer screen. Has anyone here actually read a 400-1000 page
>book on the screen, without any oprinted text at all? What's it like?
>Do your eyes go buggy?
Yes, I've done that - I've proofread an e-text version of Ivanhoe that
way, and I'm proofreading parts of The Antiquary just now.
It's not pleasant -- I can do it only for about 30 or 40 minutes, then
my eyes become too tired. And I find that I miss a lot of errors that
are obvious when I see the text on paper.
But proofreading is something else than reading for pleasure. I've
tried reading some of the shorter OBI e-texts on screen, but so far I
can't get the reading machinery out of my eyes.
--
Anders Thulin a...@linkoping.trab.se 013-23 55 32
Telia Research AB, Teknikringen 2B, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden