Re: META : list volume, email text formatting, peeves

From: KPJ (kpj@sics.se)
Date: Thu May 16 2002 - 05:06:40 MDT


It appears as if J.W. Harris <index@cox.net> wrote:
|
|I've seen an article that estimated people read 33% on screen than on
|paper. I believe it. One reason I've developed a distaste for GUI is
|I've found I can read plain console mode white-on-black 80x25 faster.
|100x37 for less than an hour at a time.

What GUI have you tried? I use ctwm, an offspring of twm, but a number of
console jockeys I know prefer evilwm, since it feels like using the Linux
virtual consoles even though you actually use a GUI. You might wish to try
it.

For faster reading, I use a `readable' font in a larger font size, currently
(on Linuxen) I use

    -adobe-courier-bold-r-normal--14-140-75-75-m-90-iso8859-1,
    -misc-fixed-bold-r-normal--15-120-100-100-c-90-iso8859-2,
    -adobe-courier-medium-r-normal--16-0-0-0-m-0-iso8859-3,
or kanji16,

for ISO {8859-{1,2,3},2022-JP} character sets.

To read faster one may also wish to change GUI colours to match one's colour
perception. I used to use a minimum of colours (black, green) but have found
that I can read faster using colours to signal various window decorations.
YMMV.

[>SNIP<]
|
|If anyone objects to me re-blocking their text at 70 columns wide when
|I quote them, please let me know.

I prefer to quote with the character `|' since I find that '>' makes the text
less readable for me. With a proportional font, the `|' character uses less
screen estate, as well. As to re-blocking, I use `+' to mark that this part
actually is an overflow from the previous physical line.

KPJ <kpj@sics.se> wrote:
|
|Somebody sends a message with lines longer that 80 columns and I wish to
+ comment on that message.

<my comment appears here - note the empty line before the comment>

For longer quotes, I use the following quoting method:

\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
I prefer to quote with the character `|' since I find that '>' makes the text
less readable for me. With a proportional font, the `|' character uses less
screen estate, as well. As to re-blocking, I use `+' to mark that this part
actually is an overflow from the previous physical line.
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/

It is rather easy to detect at a glance.

[>SNIP<]

+ GUI: one can learn to use one pretty well
|in a single day, and then never get much faster, mostly because of the
|constant interruptions of keyboard usage to use the mouse. (Yes I
|know about keyboard menu shortcuts. They are neither consistent nor
|universal.)

You can all but forget about the mouse if you use the evilwm window manager.
There exists no windows decorations to click on (its windows only have a one
pixel border as decoration), no menus, no icons, just a window for the program
to run in. Naturally, if you insist to run a mouse-requiring program in the
window you would need to use the mouse, but not for anything else.



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