Interestingly, 8.5 x 11 comes about because of writing, not reading.
Books are smaller than 8.5 x 11. Tablets are 8.5 x 11, and typewriters
copied that. Laser printers copied typewriters. Stenographers used smaller
tablets because they had to hold them in their hands rather than put them on
a desk. Writing on a PDA is similar.
Reading is another story. Turns out that line width is not all that
important. No book has 72 characters per line, and no book has fixed pitch
fonts. All of that is a technology crutch, and horrible for readability.
People who claim 72 character fixed pitch lines is for readers are smokin
something funny. It's left-over Hollerith card, with no basis in human
value.
Display technology has a really annoying reality - people always want more
resolution, but they pay close to nothing for it. A great many companies
have
imploded because they believed people will pay a significant premium for a
better display (I imploded one or two myself, including a 300 dpi CRT
display
in '85). Just isn't so.
Display technology also is not subject to Moore's law - it's currently much,
much slower, and about 90% of the innovations have not turned into
commercial
realities. Take every announcement of new display technology with a very
large dose of skepticism.
The biggest problem with PDAs today is contrast ratio, and that is fixable
with more brightness, but has the problem of eating batteries. You will
probably see high contrast ratio, probably color, PDAs commonplace soon.
They will increase resolution maybe 5% per year on average, but don't hold
your breath on much more than that. I can see displays that unfold once,
like a book, but the idea that to read something you will unfold, and
unfold,
and unfold doesn't seem like it will get very far.
If you want something to be readable, use a proportional font, don't worry
too much about line width, and increase your contrast ratio.
With respect to this discussion, it's not ASCII that's the problem, it's
the font and the fixed line width. However, if we fix that, then a we
Get to fix several less important issues without any additional
complexity
but
We get all the problems of universiality, and archival storage
The solution has been obvious, but it has a cost we haven't figured out how
to pay. The solution is to separate the functions of "source", "display"
and "archive". Source in XML, display in a variety of formats, including
fixed width, fixed pitch ASCII. Archive both the XML source and the ASCII.
The cost is that to be useful, we need tools to produce nroff markup from
XML source, because no one is ready to accept RFCs that can't be displayed
the way we display them now, and archive them the way we archive now.
Marshall's excellent work is fine for I-Ds, but it isn't enough for RFCs.
We need to produce pleasing ASCII, and the tool we use for that is nroff.
The tool and the DTD has to allow the overworked, and under appreciated
RFC editor staff to produce at least the same quality of ASCII output as
they do now, with no more than the current level of effort. New tools mean
training, and that is another part of the cost.
We also have to create an XML archive from the current archive.
Harald's suggestion of allowing ASCII and one other file to be archived for
I-Ds is a very reasonable, and very useful step. He has a really good
point;
if we show that we will use another format, then we can move forward.
As soon as someone puts up a pleasing HTML render for the XML source,
that will be my preferred way to view I-Ds. The indexing, reference,
and other side effects will also be welcome.
Brian
-----Original Message-----
From: Bora Akyol [mailto:akyol(_at_)pluris(_dot_)com]
Sent: Monday, February 26, 2001 10:27 PM
To: Lyndon Nerenberg
Cc: Marshall T. Rose; ietf(_at_)ietf(_dot_)org
Subject: Re: HTML better for small PDAs
I guess I have to hold up this "letter" sized paper display and try to
write on it at the same time.
I'll believe it when I see it. I saw the article on this
topic in MIT Tech
review a few months ago, but they were saying that this technology is
years ahead. In the meantime, I will keep on using my Pilot
(oops Palm).
Bora
On Mon, 26 Feb 2001, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote:
the hardware problem is the eyes and the hands. i use a
pda because i can
put it in my hip pocket. that's just not going to happen
with a screen that
half-size or full-size.
You're thinking too traditionally. Displays will decouple from the
processor (think Bluetooth). The "CPU" will holster on your belt,
and the A4 sized thin-film display will fold up to fit in
your pocket.
And pixel density will increase to approach that of paper.
(At 300 DPI
you can shrink the font enough to get the better part of a
60x72 character
page onto even todays sized PDA displays if you display in
landscape.)
Or maybe the technology will be something else. The point is that
the display technology _will_ be there, and it will be there soon.
(Soon enough that current PDA limitations aren't a good enough
justification - IMO - for the sort of changes we're talking about
making.)
--lyndon
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