RE: Are you debating the elimination of printed docs? (An idea. . .)

[Darren Barefoot <dbarefoot -at- mpsbc -dot- com>]

Good afternoon,

Well, actually, while we're on the subject of hyperopia, that problem would
no doubt be neatly solved by a Zoom or Font Size setting on the eBook (it
it's not there yet, it's coming). The words could be as big as you wanted.

As for the look and feel, the designers of eBooks are well aware of this
sentiment. Not only have they intentionally made the  left side of the book
thicker, to mirror a cover bent back around the spine, but certain models
come with an attractive, heavy leather "cover" that you flip back. Sure,
it's not paper, but I'll bet it smells good. I'm certain they could build a
scent emulator to handle the ink (and the mold? no thanks) as well.

Actually, digital paper is on the horizon as well. In, in theory, you could
have a "book" full of blank pages that had one digital page in it. As you
finish each page, you press a button, and the next page appears. This page
could be inserted whereever you wanted--perhaps one third of the way in, or
maybe you'd actually move it through the blank book as you approached the
end of the story. All of the comforts of a real book plus the advantages of
digital distribution and publishing. Stranger things have happened. DB.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sharon Burton-Hardin [mailto:sharonburton -at- earthlink -dot- net]
Sent: Friday, January 07, 2000 11:07 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Are you debating the elimination of printed docs? (An
idea.. .)


And there is something lovely about holding a printed book in your hand,
feeling the paper cover, smelling the ink, flipping through the pages. Can't
be replicated by anyhting else.

And I can't read an ebook in bed to go to sleep, which is where I do much of
my reading. Took my new husband a while to adjust to it but now he knows my
brain must simply vanish into a book for 20 minutes or so before it can shut
off for the night. And before I started sleeping in my contacts, (oh, please
God, let 2000 by the year I get my eyes fixed!) I also had the most
frustrating problem of being so very near sighted that I can't see a printed
page unless it is against my nose. Difficult to manage that with an ebook.

sharon