Hi - > From: "John C Klensin" <john-ietf@xxxxxxx> > To: "Ole Jacobsen" <ole@xxxxxxxxx> > Cc: <ietf@xxxxxxxx> > Sent: Monday, November 28, 2011 6:28 AM > Subject: RE: reading on small devices, was discouraged by .docx ... > On the other hand, I tried the PDF file out on one of those > small-screen devices and discovered that it preserved the page > format exactly-- by showing pages of the document reduced to > show one page per screen, no scrolling. The resolution isn't up > to it even if my aging eyes are, so that is no solution either. In a way, this discussion seems akin to complaints that it's hard to read RFCs when they're punched onto ticker tape. I think the discussion of ASCII art and tables is a bit of a red herring - at those dimensions, the key value of artwork, giving the user an opportunity to absorb both the gestalt and the details in a single glance, is lost. Likewise tables, either shrunk to illegibility or reduced to one-cell-at-a-time scan for such a display, lose much of their value for organizing information and revealing patterns. 15 or 20 years ago, I might have been able to use one of those small-screen devices. Nowadays - no way. If things are displayed large enough to be legible the amount of vertical scrolling makes reading anything longer than one (short) sentence painfully slow. But here's a solution: let's just wait a few more years, and the folks who are currently so enthusiastic about using these gizmos to read RFCs will have been compelled by their own aging eyes to move on to something else. Randy _______________________________________________ Ietf mailing list Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf