Naah. We should update the 72-character ASCII limit to 40-characters. Not only will that work for all of these mobile devices, it will work on a TRS-80, too. On Nov 27, 2011, at 3:20 AM, Yaakov Stein wrote: > Dave > > I agree that we are thinking as "content creators", and that is the problem. > > The requirement is not that we will be able to write a new document in 50 years in the same format. > The requirement is that we should be able to read the documents written 50 years before. > > The problem about ASCII art is not simply the monospacing. > The main problem is the line wrapping. > > I have tried many times to look at ASCII art on iPhones, iPods, and even small pads. > Once you zoom down sufficiently to get the lines not to break, > the characters are no longer readable. > For a screen size of about 60 mm, 80 character lines means that the characters are only 0.75mm in width. > Even assuming a "short" figure that could be viewed rotated (width 110 mm) > each character width would be only slightly more than the 1 mm needed for viewing, > and less than the 1.5 mm needed for actual reading. > > Put in another way, high-end cellphone screens presently have 640 pixel widths. > For 80 character layouts, this translates to 8 pixels per character plus inter-character spacing, > or about 6 pixel character widths. > Even were they visible (and each pixel is less than 1/10 of a mm!) > this would mean very low quality fonts - 5*7 was the lowest quality used by old dot-matrix printers. > And modern software is not optimized for readability at that font resolution. > > So, if we expect people to be able to read our documents in 5 years, let alone 50, > we need to stop using ASCII art. > > Y(J)S > > -----Original Message----- > From: ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx [mailto:ietf-bounces@xxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Dave Aronson > Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 00:10 > To: IETF Discussion > Subject: Re: discouraged by .docx was Re: Plagued by PPTX again > > On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 15:52, Yaakov Stein <yaakov_s@xxxxxxx> wrote: > >> ASCII is already unreadable on many popular devices > > Oh? For what reason? Sorry, I'm still using an incredibly stupid > phone, so I may be behind the curve on such changes. As far as I've > seen in my limited exposure, any difficulty is usually because it's > often not linewrapped well (or at all), forcing a lot of horizontal > scrolling, especially after being forced to be big enough to be > legible on tiny screens not held right up to the face. That's rather > inconvenient, but still a far cry from "unreadable" -- plus it's a > problem with the reader program (being too "featureless" to rewrap the > text), not anything inherent in the format. > > ASCII *artwork*, yes, that often gets ruined by the refusal of many > programs to allow the user to display content in a monospaced font. > But that's not because it's in plain ASCII; you could say the same > thing of a Word or PDF document that incorporates "ASCII" art. > >> I am referring to the fact that more and more people are reading >> documents on cell-phones and other small devices. >> According to analysts, this will be the most popular platform for reading >> material from the Internet within a few years. > > But among what audience? End-users at large, yes, I can certainly > believe that. But techies, especially of sufficient caliber to even > *want* to read the IETF's output, let alone participate in creating > it? Very doubtful. I don't think we'll be giving up our laptops, > never mind large monitors, any time soon. > > Phones and tablets are for content *consumption*. We are content > *creators*, be it programs, documents, or whatever. That's an > entirely different set of hardware requirements. When was the last > time you saw a program or document or anything else of significant > size, written using a phone, or even a tablet? > > -Dave > > _______________________________________________ > Ietf mailing list > Ietf@xxxxxxxx > https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf
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