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

[Tyler Jameson Little]

On Sunday, 11 August 2013 at 18:25:02 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu 
wrote:
> 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

I really wish this was more popular:
__________________
|       |        |
|   1   |   2    |
|       |        |
|       |        |
|----------------|
|       |        |
|   3   |   4    |
|       |        |
|       |        |
___ page break ___
|       |        |
|       |        |
|   1   |   2    |
|       |        |
|----------------|
|       |        |
|       |        |
|   3   |   4    |
|       |        |

This allows a multi-column layout with less scrolling. The aspect 
ratio on my screen is just about perfect to fit half of a page at 
a time. I don't understand why this is rarely taken advantage 
of... For example, I like G+'s layout because posts seem to be 
layed out L->R, T->B like so:

|  1  |  2  |  3  |
|  4  |  2  |  3  |
|  4  |  2  |  5  |
|  6  |  7  |  5  |

Why can't we get the same for academic papers? They're even 
simpler because each section can be forced to be the same size.