Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: aliza@c3pe.UUCP (Aliza R. Panitz)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: CRT vs. Paper
Message-ID: <1885@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 12 Apr 88 16:41:23 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Organization: K. L. Ginter & Associates, Inc.
Lines: 49
Approved: taylor@hplabs

Ake Olofsson relates a tale about a man not reading his e-mail due 
to a printer malfunction, and says:
> 
> Today I know that his represents a very common opinion among ordinary 
> users - a lot of people don't like CRT-reading.

At work some of our workstations have 43-line crt's (EGA).  It makes an
UNBELIEVABLE difference in the ease of getting work done, in all kinds of 
tasks, from working on source code to editing my latest technical 
specification.

24 lines is a real limit once you know something better.  Ten years from now
I will consider 43 lines archaic.  Technology isn't ready for casual reading
online.

> [one reason for the difficulty of reading from the CRT] has to do with 
> the early or peripheral visual stages of the reading process.  A lot 
> of research has found that, even for highly experienced subjects, 
> proof-reading (quite a familiar task to most academics) is slightly 
> slower on standard CRT displays than on paper.  

I used to work at a typesetting house.  The vast majority of my group's work 
consisted of updating pages of loose-leaf legal manuals as laws changed.
Our typical procedure was:

	1) Run off "old" script (text and formatting commands mixed)

	2) Mark corrections on printout.

	3) Edit the script on the CRT, and generate new printout.

	4) Proofread new printout against manuscript.

	4.5) If errors, GOTO step 2

	5) Generate typeset camera copy (EXPENSIVE)

	6) Check camera copy vs. manuscript

If we were VERY pressed for time, step 2 could be skipped.  but this was an
emergency expedient only.  

On the other side of the coin, when I've worked at litigation support 
databases, (reading documents and filling out forms) I've found that my 
accuracy and speed and EASE OF WORK were much better on terminals than on 
paper...  But that is partly accounted for by the physical work of lifting 
a pencil. 

Aliza