Re: Hugh Darwen's latest free book

From: paul c <toledobythesea_at_oohay.ac>
Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2012 19:48:44 -0800
Message-ID: <k8mrna$uo3$1_at_speranza.aioe.org>


On 22/11/2012 6:44 PM, paul c wrote:
> It's pdf's themselves that have always put me off, having to use various
> graphical controls to imitate the turning of a printed page.

A "good" example of stupid technocratic behaviour is the pdf with a technical subject that has several paragraphs on different pages that refer to the same figure. This is a nuisance in paper books but a much bigger nuisance in pdf's.

It's always seemed the height of stupid design and absent ergonomics not to take advantage of the common display visual medium that pdf's use to let you put two pages side-by-side on a screen while they don't let you indicate that two pages are to be displayed, one to preserve a figure that you have indicated, while you continue to scroll through nearby pages that have sentences that refer to it.

Database theory and a lot of other subjects would be more accessible if the technocrats were less obsessed with their methods and more interested in the observer's situation.

The epub developers seem to be re-thinking a number of such aspects, but I haven't seen them deal with that one yet. Received on Fri Nov 23 2012 - 04:48:44 CET

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