[10459] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Re: ASCII and economics.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Michael Silverberg)
Mon Jul 29 20:33:24 1996
Date: Mon, 29 Jul 1996 15:14:13 -0500 (CDT)
From: Michael Silverberg <michaels@salieri.informatics.sunysb.edu>
To: Multiple recipients of list PACS-L <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@UHUPVM1.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
I do seem to have stirred up a hornet's nest over ASCII but that's good
because I happen to think that before we can commit large swathes of
printed material to electronic form we have to have a medium of display
that approaches the richness of print. And that, by the way, has nothing to
do with the argument of curling up with a good book vs. crouching over your
laptop.
I would like to respond to some points made in reply to my original posting.
> (By the way Prof. HART, do you use a colour monitor?)
>
Why? Do you want to know what color I am?
>
The point I thought was obvious - ASCII was originally a medium developed
for Green (or Amber) on black but few people still use monochrome monitors.
Must we still adhere to a format whose origins are far predate the majority
of the hardware in use? But that is the overall philosophy that Prof. Hart
seems to espouse.
Prof. Hart seems to hanker after the days when REAl computers were
controlled by a manual full of arcane commands e.g.- "one of the risks of
using GUI's--you rarely, if ever, know if you are seeing what is really
there." His Gutenberg instructions also warn against the sin of GUI.
Doesn't he realise that "the real argument here. . .Elitist or Utilitarian.
. ." is just as much about the difficulties of using a computer as it is
about buying one. The GUI was an attempt to make computer use less the
province of a *technocratic* elite.
>
>If you try the original file, and read it in a program that reads
>Plain Vanilla ASCII, the pages look just fine. Try wide margins,
>and use the cr/lfs that are in the file.
>
As Dan Lester pointed out - it depends on what you mean by readable. Pages
and pages of monospaced courier in an 8 x 10in format with no relief is NOT
readable - its just legible which is something else. Just look at a real
printed book and you will see what long evolution has shown to be readable
- short lines, lots of white space, proportional typefaces etc. The
typesetter's art did not evolve as a dilettante activity and we should not
even think about just discarding it. (growing hot under the collar here ;-)
)
Thomas Dowling wrote:
>Even at that, though, the character set is not the place to provide a rich
>formatting environment. Bold and Italics are not going to meet the needs
>of those documents which really *do* depend heavily on their formatting,
>and I don't want to have to work with a character set that includes a
>character for "landscape orientation, one inch margins, 2 columns with a
>half-inch gutter, set body text 10/12pt Palatino (black), set headers 18pt
>Avant Garde (red)."
I would mildly disagree. While elaborate formatting does need something
like pdf or sgml, I do think that some basic style characteristics added to
the character set would go a long way to make documents more readable and
at the same time preserve cross platform utility. And I stand by, with
emphasis, what I said about the need to standardize an extended character
set so that accents, em and en dashes, typograhical quotes etc can be
included. That is a basic requirement for being able to express what is
currently basic English. Even Prof. Hart used -- after I said it makes me
cringe. How insensitive of him!
Finally a point about the economic issues of embracing new technologies. We
are still in an era in which computer use is increasing. That means that
each year, many, many people buy a computer for the first time.
Simultaneously, many others have to replace one - not out of upgrade frenzy
but just because their old one is worn out. Now, because of the trends we
all know, those new computers will cost the same or less than the old
monochrome text interface computers of yesteryear but will have GUI's, 24
bit colour, 16 bit stereo sound, CD-ROM, 16 or more megabytes of RAM and a
gigabyte or so of drive space. Should we be telling the proud new owners
that all that good stuff is just for playing games? That all serious
material will be plain ASCII text in black and white and don't bother to
download Acrobat reader (even though its free) because it's elitist?
I don't think so. I appreciate the sentiments and concerns that started
this thread in the first place (Karen, are you still here?) but in the end,
social problems need social solutions, and attempting to put the brakes on
technology a)won't work and b)doesn't address the underlying issues.
Perhaps we should all stop bitching about pdf and put that energy into
asking our legislators and ourselves why the richest society in history
can't afford to provide our citizens with decent education in schools
equipped with all the technology that we are so good at producing?
Michael
_____________________________________________________________________
Michael Silverberg, D.Phil michaels@salieri.informatics.sunysb.edu
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