At 09:00 a -0400 05/03/2007, Gary (Lists) didst inscribe upon an electronic papyrus: >"Chuck Pelto" wrote: > >> The idea of a SOUND FILE on such a disc had not crossed my mind, but >> you DO have a fascinating idea there. THANKS!!!!! > >Yes, the unsighted are often an afterthought in the dissemination of public >information. > >> Printing books thick enough to contain the information would be cost >> prohibitive. Putting the information on a DVD that people could page >> through on a DVD player attached to their television, should they >> lack a computer, seems like a reasonable alternative....provide we've >> got electricity. However, I suspect we'd have such for a while. Long >> enough for people to read the information and act on it. > >On the one hand, you sketch a scenario where electricity service >continuation is unknown ("I suspect we'd have such for a while. Long enough >for..."). In such a circumstance, it seems that paging through 40+ pages is >counter-productive. I have used DVD page-by-page to review movie scripts >and such and it is very slow, on commercial DVD's. > >In the "pande[mic][monium]" scenario you roughly outline, /sound/ is far >more useful than clicking a remote to scroll pages in an online book. (Have >you seen the scaling issues present in these DVD 'page' examples? In order >to view the text, the zoom factor prevents the entire page. Not only do we >have to 'turn' pages, we also have to 'scroll' the page around to get it >all.) Plus people can *act* while listening to audio, thus saving vital time. >Either a too-rough sketch is provided here (which is fine and appropriate) >or the model is sufficiently flawed that it warrants further (technical) >consideration. Yeah, there was this invention a while back... think it was called "radio". :-D -boo