Szabolcs Nagy dixit (2009-09-05, 10:35): > > There's also that pagination is annoying and obsolete now, but this is > > mostly related to the former point. > > +1 > > all printed documents are obsolete and any system that is optimized > for the 'paper' display medium > > same applies to hyphenation and ligatures which require added > complexity but provides no gain and many issues wrt displaying and > processing the result..
This is purest craps of crap. A high quality book typeset by a knowledgeable typesetter is *incomparable* to any automatically generated text that you get on screen/PDA or whichever low-resolution display system you choose (one that will also usually lack contrast). Robert Bringhurst makes a parallel that a typesetter with his typesetting skills is interpreting text like a musician interprets music and gives it final shape for a reader to consume (or appreciate). This is somewhat poetic, but definitely strikes a very important point. High quality fonts, ligatures, proper hyphenation and other subtle typographic elements (yes, with lots of added complexity, thank you very much) are a *big* gain and make perfect sense when typeset at 2450 dpi; pretending that text set on a 90 dpi PDA display by some quicky crap pseudo-typesetting engine is equivalent in quality is preposterous. > a formatted document should be reasonably legible on a > 80x25chars/16colors monitor as well as on a pda This does not support the argument that “all printed documents are obsolete” in any way. It's an entirely different matter that's been dealt pretty well with by tools like troff for more than a third of a century now probably. > said that html is far from a usable text markup solution not to > mention css which is a huge patchwork without clear goals and > requirements That's yet another matter, and you're probably right. -- [a]
