On Mon, 22 Mar 1999, Arthur H. Smith wrote:
> >If a way could be found to get the printed matter to the masses without
> >draining the aforementioned masses' pockets, then I'd be happy. I like
>
> Its called Adobe Acrobat Reader. You create a document and covert it with
> Adobe Acrobat and it can be down loaded off the web and read at leisure, in
> the reader comes in PC or Mac versions.
That would be nice to see, but I don't think the publishers would go for
it, because...
1. All revenue would have to come from advertising. So we'd have to
download lots of ads in order to get good stuff. It's hard to charge
money for something downloadable; I don't think I'd go for paying $5 on a
credit card so that I could download something.
2. Acrobat PDF files get plenty big plenty quick. IE, the Moss catalog
runs at 5+ MB. This is no trouble for those of us with Big Fat Internet
connections, but for the rest of the peons (myself included) who are
limited to modems and the like, 5 MB takes about 2 hours to get, more if
the network is busy.
And then you have to read the magazine on your screen- or print it out!
However, perhaps some method of composing the articles, then distributing
them to region-specific printers, who would then place region-specific
advertisements in the magazine, then print it... would that keep costs
down?
I'm no expert on writing / distributing printed matter by any stretch of
thinking (but I do know about computers)- I surmise that it may be
difficult to get the information from pen to eye by sending it via a
network whereby it would be re-"written" then applied to paper, but if it
were possible, I bet it would make a nice product.
-Malcolm
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