Sebastian > its amazing how the tens of millions of Web users out there happily > use this inferior technology, isn't it. Indeed, it is so amazing that I simply do not believe it. The WEB has lots of potential uses, some of which are already excleent (instant typing correction is not one of them:-), but many of which need much better technology before people "should be happy" with them. Would you be happy to have to do all your Java course on-line, without a decent printer available? Happiness with tecnology is a funny thing: very, very many people are "very happy" with a 14in screen; but a lot of (not all) people who now have a 17in or 19in screen now realise that they "should not have been happy" with the 14in one. > of course, many are not 20th century mathematicians... And I am sure that the world is a better place for that:-)? Puts on statistical hat: I suspect that the proportion of this dying race that uses the web is very high compared with the whole of the great unwashed. > > if you want a document to read on the screen, why not design for the > screen? of course, if you work towards an A4 page with 1 inch margins > and 10 pt Computer Modern math, and display it in PDF with the full > page, it looks like a set of bird tracks. Mmm, interesting. I agree completely with Sebastian that we need good screen design but i am unsure if he agrees with me that a lot of basic ideas in design and in the technolgies to support it: the designs themselves will be different and the possibilities of on-screen documents (even static ones) are probably more diverse, but there is a lot of basic stuff in common. Thus in the context of this list, there is no need to make a large distinction but just to extend our idea of what a document is. Even more interesting: I think that PDF is an excellnet medium for viewing on screen, and printing if needed, a 10pt CM math document. And we happy breed of people, the 20C pure mathematicians, now do this a lot thanks to the efforts of our professional bodies (and maybe some publishers too;-). chris