Re: Warnock's speech

[Larry Kollar <Larry.Kollar@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan Emory wrote:

>Anyone who believes that reading complex information on a computer monitor
>is better than reading it in a well designed book is severely twisted, and
>that's never going to change. One does not carefully read and reread
>something serious or complex or important on a computer screen.

I wouldn't say "never," but the technology has to be developed first. I
think it'll take screen resolutions of at least 200 dpi before electronic
books become practical; more likely 300 dpi -- and they'll need to be
dirt-cheap. I'm not holding my breath.

>Brad, in his never-ending feverish greed, made that point by depriving us
>all of the capability to print Warnock's speech....

At least he made it available, and how would he know if you printed it?
In my case, as well as yours, I simply read it on-line though. And even
though Brad copyrighted it, he allowed downloads. (Like you said, the
content of the speech was such that anyone buying a tape would have
felt rooked. :-)

>Doing serious reading on the web is an oxymoron. The web is the domain of
>the Ritalin-deprived. FrameMaker is designed to produce documents to be read
>by those who aren't. What I got from Warnock's talk is that Frame products
>don't fit that well into Adobe's master plan for delivering content to the
>Attention-Deficit-Disordered masses.

Well, there's an implied generalization to all current electronic
documents... Unix users have been using manpages for about 30 years now.
Sure they're clunky, but they're lowest common denominator and have
served a purpose. For brief reference material, reading from a browser
is fine. But yeah, it's mostly entertainment or news.

PDF is becoming a kind of standard for longer documents accessible on
the web. I tend to print out the parts I want to keep -- and if I have
to spend a few cents on my laser printer, it's quicker and much cheaper
than buying a pre-printed book. FrameMaker will continue to be the
top-tier PDF creation tool, at least until something better comes along.
Again, I'm not holding my breath.

	Larry (obviously not speaking for Arris)



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