Is D the Answer to the One vs. Two Language High ,Performance Computing Dilemma?

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 8/11/13 10:20 AM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Aug 2013 09:28:21 -0700
> Andrei Alexandrescu <SeeWebsiteForEmail at erdani.org> wrote:
>
>> On 8/11/13 8:49 AM, monarch_dodra wrote:
>>> On Sunday, 11 August 2013 at 15:42:24 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>> On Sun, 11 Aug 2013 01:22:34 -0700
>>>> Walter Bright <newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> http://elrond.informatik.tu-freiberg.de/papers/WorldComp2012/PDP3426.pdf
>>>>
>>>> Holy crap those two-column PDFs are hard to read! Why in the world
>>>> does academia keep doing that anyway? (Genuine question, not
>>>> rhetoric)
>>>>
>>>> But the fact that article even exists is really freaking
>>>> awesome. :)
>>>
>>> My guess is simply because it takes more space, making a 4 page
>>> article look like a 7 page ;)
>>
>> Double columns take less space
>
> Per column yes, but overall, no. The same number of chars + same font
> == same amount of space no matter how you rearrange them.
>
> If anything, double columns take more space due to the inner margin and
> increased number of line breaks (triggering more word-wrapping and thus
> more space wasted due to more wrapped words - and that's just as true
> with justified text as it is with left/right/center-aligned.

For a column of text to be readable it should have not much more than 10 
words per line. Going beyond that forces eyes to scan too jerkily and 
causes difficulty in following line breaks. Filling an A4 or letter 
paper with only one column would force either (a) an unusually large 
font, (b) very large margins, or (c) too many words per line. Children 
books choose (a), which is why many do come in that format. LaTeX and 
Word choose (b) in single-column documents.

>> and are more readable.
>>
>
> In *print* double-columns are arguably more readable (although I've
> honestly never found that to be the case personally, at least when
> we're talking roughly 8.5" x 11" pages).
>
> But it's certainly not more readable in PDFs, which work like this
> (need monospaced font):
>
>         Start
>           |         /|
>           |        / |
>           |  Scroll  |
>           |   Up /   |
>    Scroll |     /    |  Scroll
>     Down	 |    /     |   Down
>           |   /      |
>           |  /       |
>           | /        |
>           |/         |
>                     /
>            /-------/
>           /
>           |         /|
>           |        / |
>           |  Scroll  |
>           |   Up /   |
>    Scroll |     /    |  Scroll
>     Down	 |    /     |   Down
>           |   /      |
>           |  /       |
>           | /        |
>           |/         |
>                     /
>            /-------/
>           /
>           |         /|
>           |        / |
>           |  Scroll  |
>           |   Up /   |
>    Scroll |     /    |  Scroll
>     Down	 |    /     |   Down
>           |   /      |
>           |  /       |
>           | /        |
>           |/         |
>                      |
>                     End

Multicolumn is best for screen reading, too. The only problem is there's 
no good flowing - the columns should fit the screen. There's work on 
that, see e.g. http://alistapart.com/article/css3multicolumn.


Andrei