Quote:
Originally Posted by bazzz
Heard that argument a thousand times... Pages in regular books are opaque too. Put some lightsource behind that page and the light will shine through.
Why should that be impossible with eInk?
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Paper is not completely opaque, it's slightly
translucent. Backlighting e-ink is closer to trying to backlight cardboard.
E-ink works by moving particles (black and white) up and down in little bubbles.
Regardless of whether a given bubble is black or white,
both sets of particles are still
inside it, and will block the light equally. Even if the substrate weren't also completely opaque (which it probably is), the fact that all the particles are there
regardless of state, would give you a pretty close to uniform blockage of light.
Actually, your example of putting a light behind a page is a good one: when you do that, you see the text on
this side of the page, and strong shadows of the text on the
other side as well, making it rather difficult to read. Same deal with e-ink, except there's
no spaces between and around the letters, effectively the whole page is covered, one "side" or the other, with ink, making it
impossible to read.