iPad and tablets, just not good enough yet for RPG pdfs!

[Mok]

Ever since I've been a child and I watched Lumpy pull out his portable video player gizmo on the Star Wars Holiday Special and watched Boba Fett mess with his father and Han as a cartoon I desperately wanted one. Quickly though I discovered such things did not exist, however I also learned that technology was getting better and eventually we'd have them.

Well, it look a long time... we have them now, but everything still crawls out at a tepid pace. Well, I'm sure people will stress the amazing progression we're currently in, but my impatience continues unabated.

The revealing of the iPad is another one of these moments that's aggravating my geeky obsession. I'm very enthused of its existence because it's taking a form factor that ought to be ubiquitous at this point and shoving it into the mainstream marketplace where hopefully it will thrive.

Still, after reading this article, what I find maddening is that no one is coming out with the most obvious form factor needed, being able to display an 8.5"x 11" sheet of paper to scale.

The thing is, we've had basically had the equivalent of a tablet pc technology for a very long time now, it's called the clipboard. It allows several documents to be easily accessible in a mobile format. You can write on it, and there are slightly thicker ones that allow a compartment to be opened for filing. Overall the size is pretty standard, about 12.5" in length and 9" wide.

Unfortunately, so much of the form factor seems to be driven by watching 16:9 movies, or reading softcover novels that it is screwing up the dimensions needed to function with paper, which despite the promise of a paperless society, still has yet to happen.

The iPad might help move us closer to a paperless society, but that is still a long ways off. What is really needed is a digital "analog" of the paper format, and then finally rework the medium to best fit digital use.

I had high hopes for the Plastic Logic Que reader, however when they finally revealed its specs I was dissapointed to find out that the 8.5" x 11" screen was in fact the size of the whole device. Instead it has an 10.5" diagonal screen.

After that disappointment, I did hear about the Skiff which will be coming out this year. It's screen is bigger, having an 11.5" diagonal area to view. Better, though there are few details about it at the moment.

I grab a piece of paper and started working out what that really meant. Unfortunately it isn't enough to get things to true scale for documents. If you shave off the standard margins of a sheet of paper then you need at least an 11.2" diagonal screen. To get the full sheet of paper displayed at scale means a 13.88" diagonal screen.

So really the magic number I'm waiting to hear is 14" e-reader/table screen. I'll be able to open up a word or pdf document and have a complete sheet of paper, with all of those glorious blank margins being simulated digitally for me.

It could be asked, "why on earth do you want margins in a digital document?" and all I can say is just look at how we use paper. We don't have text run right up to the edge of paper. Margins help the reader focus, framing the text with negative space so that it is easier to read. They also are vital to notes and commentary. Ultimately, it's about getting to a point where we have digital paper that can be used and interacted with, and not just having passive consumption of content.

Currently I own a Gateway tablet notebook pc. It has a 14.25" diagonal screen. It's a great machine, works well and I have no problem viewing docs and pdfs on it. The problem is it is heavy and really hot running. I can't lay in bed, on the couch or even sit in the bathroom with this thing. It's got too much horsepower to be used a a reader.

So I'm left to impatiently twiddle my thumbs waiting for technology to catch up with my imagination and desires. I know all of this stuff is coming, but it can't come fast enough for me.

[brock]

Mok wrote:

I had high hopes for the Plastic Logic Que reader, however when they finally revealed its specs I was dissapointed to find out that the 8.5" x 11" screen was in fact the size of the whole device. Instead it has an 10.5" diagonal screen.
...
To get the full sheet of paper displayed at scale means a 13.88" diagonal screen.

Same scale at the same distance. In reality, you can just hold the Que at 75% of the distance that you would the equivalent sheet of paper and they are the same perceived scale.

Have a play with one, you may be pleasantly surprised.

[Betatrack]

Yeah, but then you'd still have to scroll to see the whole page. We want to not have to scroll! >(

[brock]

Betatrack wrote:

Yeah, but then you'd still have to scroll to see the whole page. We want to not have to scroll! >(

Scroll?

A Letter size PDF displayed full-screen on a Que held at 1.5 feet from the eye will appear exactly the same size as a piece of Letter size paper held at 2 feet from the eye.

No scrolling involved.

[Betatrack]

I'd still prefer to have it the size of a normal piece of paper.

[Andrew Turner]

You might ask yourself why the standard American sheet of paper is 81/2 x 11.

Literally, when we (Hammersmith Paper Co. UK, to be exact) began mass-producing paper, it was milled in giant sheets that had to be cut. The length of the page was measured as 1/4th the length of an outstretched arm, and the width as the span of a hand from thumb to little finger.

Seriously.

A standard sheet of paper is 11 inches long because that was the most efficient way to teach an otherwise uneducated vatman where and how many cuts to make.

Oh, and shouldn't this thread be in the Tech Section of the messageboards...?

[Jam412]

Andrew Turner wrote:

You might ask yourself why the standard American sheet of paper is 81/2 x 11.

Literally, when we (Hammersmith Paper Co. UK, to be exact) began mass-producing paper, it was milled in giant sheets that had to be cut. The length of the page was measured as 1/4th the length of an outstretched arm, and the width as the span of a hand from thumb to little finger.

Seriously.

A standard sheet of paper is 11 inches long because that was the most efficient way to teach an otherwise uneducated vatman where and how many cuts to make.

Oh, and shouldn't this thread be in the Tech Section of the messageboards...?

Cool trivia, thanks. :-)

[DM_aka_Dudemeister]

Andrew Turner wrote:

You might ask yourself why the standard American sheet of paper is 81/2 x 11.

Literally, when we (Hammersmith Paper Co. UK, to be exact) began mass-producing paper, it was milled in giant sheets that had to be cut. The length of the page was measured as 1/4th the length of an outstretched arm, and the width as the span of a hand from thumb to little finger.

Seriously.

A standard sheet of paper is 11 inches long because that was the most efficient way to teach an otherwise uneducated vatman where and how many cuts to make.

Oh, and shouldn't this thread be in the Tech Section of the messageboards...?

Interestingly enough that there is some surprisingly ergonomic design, it might have been hit upon by accident, but works with a grand range of commonly accepted rules of aesthetics and design.

[Andrew Turner]

Does it really, or have we simply accepted it thanks to marketing and cost...?

[Andrew Turner]

See? These tech threads are all over the place--this one's even in Gamer Life! If only we had a Tech Section...

[Mok]

Andrew Turner wrote:

Does it really, or have we simply accepted it thanks to marketing and cost...?

I think it's both.

That's one of the problems that I have with the metric system. For political reasons it was built on the measurement of a meridian of the earth. It's abstract and unintuitive to the human experience of space and dimension.

Older units of measurement were based off of various lengths of the human body. If you were in a market in ancient Iraq you'd have been able to come to a fair determination of many goods because everyone possessed the yardstick needed for measurement in their arms and fingers.

Sure it wasn't precise, and in the modern era we need a great deal of precision. The principle of the metric system is sound, but it should have been built up from a unit that people could intuitively understand, such as the average length of a foot, thumb, arm, etc.

Ergonomically a sheet of paper fits within this "human space." I'm not saying that 8.5x11 is the ideal dimensions, but that it fits within that zone of intuitive usability.

Now, the problem I have is that we have this vast amount of material that has been created and continues to be created in a paper size format. The forward leaning techies tell us that we just need to discard the old standard and adapt. With text flow and other new ways to format digital content we can move beyond the old standards.

I don't have any problem with progressing to that point. I'm sure that there is a lot of ergonomic studies that can point to a much for fully realized "ideal" set of dimensions. However, transitioning to that new standard needs to come in more baby steps. We're still a paper society and so having digital technology that replicates that standard is going to be a far more productive transition than one where you have to juggle between different standards.