Re: (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons?

It's very hard to take perldoc into the bathroom with you. I have learned more useless tidbits by taking the camel to the throne with me.

Also, I happen to like curling up in Borders (or a similar bookstore) with a cup of tea and read. Sometimes it's David Weber, sometimes it's Vi in a Nutshell. I know I can find every piece of information I need about the programming I do online (except for VBA, but the books aren't a help with that, either!), but I don't do all my programming research logged in. For those many times I'm not, I like paper.

Now, once e-books are a reality, I will gladly move all my computer books to that format, because I want the search capabilities that perldoc.com has. But, that's not for several years.

------
We are the carpenters and bricklayers of the Information Age.

The idea is a little like C++ templates, except not quite so brain-meltingly complicated. -- TheDamian, Exegesis 6

Please remember that I'm crufty and crochety. All opinions are purely mine and all code is untested, unless otherwise specified.

Comment on Re: (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons?

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Re: Re: (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons? by Anonymous Monk on Sep 23, 2003 at 15:03 UTC
Now, once e-books are a reality What exactly are you looking for? If you're talking about being able to download pdf or any other simple, single file of the book you will have two choices: Restricted computing (aka DRM) An indefinate wait for some silly company to do it and go broke. If you're just looking for reasonable accessibility, have a look at Safari. It's an awesome service in terms of price, selection, and nifty little features like code searches.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons? by hardburn (Abbot) on Sep 23, 2003 at 18:28 UTC
Personally, I think e-books will be practical when these requirements are met: The reader isn't bulky. Random access is easy. #1 is probably doable within the next few years. LCD screens are being made from modified ink jet printers, so we can expect readers to become easy to fold up, stuff in your pocket, etc. Things we can't do with laptops, tablet computers, and PDAs (PDAs come close, but don't go quite far enough). #2 might be asking the impossible, but I still hold hope that someone will do something clever. By random access, I mean that I can open a book to the general area I know a subject is at, having read over the book before and need to look up the specifics. Hyperlinks are a good attempt at this, but aren't quite enough. ---- I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident. -- Schemer Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: Re: (OT) I prefer to do my learning with: dead trees or flying electrons? by allolex (Curate) on Sep 26, 2003 at 07:04 UTC
Personally, I think e-books will be practical when these requirements are met: The reader isn't bulky. Random access is easy. I read Safari regularly on my Zaurus SL-5500. It is a hell of a lot less bulky than 500 pages of paper. ;) I like the ability to bookmark multiple pages and then access them like a TOC. I feel having a TOC, topic index, "goto page", and search beats your version of random access. We use books the way we do because their form makes it convenient to do so. Using an electronic device (assuming the design is tolerable and these features exist) is a question of rehabituating yourself. For some reason, people don't like the unfamiliar. :) -- Allolex	[reply]


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