Re: Hardcopy or electronic books?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg62304] Re: Hardcopy or electronic books?
- From: AES <siegman at stanford.edu>
- Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:18:31 -0500 (EST)
- Organization: Stanford University
- References: <dln1n3$glk$1@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
In article <dln1n3$glk$1 at smc.vnet.net>, "Steven T. Hatton" <hattons at globalsymmetry.com> wrote: > do not tend to read them. I much prefer having books in hardcopy. Having > the electronic form, especially if they consist of Mathematica notebooks is > certainly valuable, but does not replace the functionality of traditional > books with paper pages. > > What do others think about this? > Absolutely agree! If it's a book, a manual, or some other document that I want to thumb through, flip from page to page, read bits here and then, scan text quickly, put sticky tabs to mark pages, scribble written notes on pages -- and do it in comfort and convenience, not trapped at my desk -- then an electronic version is just NOT SATISFACTORY!! (even with laptops, Airport wireless all through my house, and so on [1]). On the other hand, nothing replaces doing a full-text electronic search through a long electronic document or manual looking for some term; or the ease of having color or animations. And nothing can be immediately and continuously updated the way an electronic document can. The ideal is to have a paper copy, *and* an electronic version at hand, with the latter containing tons of supplemental material, updates, and search capability. ---------- [1] With a laptop now being not just my primary but my one and only computer, and Airport throughout my house, I personally do a lot of "away from my desk" computing all over the house -- but I'm still always nervous about dropping it, spilling coffee in it, dog knocks it off the couch, etc.
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