[OT] Terminal width

[Benjamin Scott]

On Tue, Mar 30, 2010 at 9:14 AM, Tom Buskey <tom at buskey.name> wrote:
> I find it a bit easier to read/scan newspapers and magazine articles in
> narrow columns then wide.  There's an optimal width.  Reference books are
> wider.  Paperback novels seem optimal for pleasure reading.

  It's generally accepted that for prose, you don't want the text to
be too wide.  Beyond a certain width, the eyes can no longer
comfortably scan the lines.  And if you have to turn your head, that's
very bad.

  Reference books are different, because you're generally not scanning
many lines of text sequentially.  I was thinking program code would be
more along that idea, but I don't really know that.  Hmmm.

> Serif fonts are supposed to be easier to read.

  Hmmm.  I seem to prefer sans serif on the computer screen, serif on
print.  I wonder why?  Maybe it's an artifact of displays having
trouble rendering at the same quality as paper.  (Serif, having more
detail, presumably suffers more from low quality rendering.)

> I usually want a taller screen.

  I want the fully-immersive wrap-around 3D holographic displays you
see in science fiction films these days.  ;-)

-- Ben