Why the Ipod Touch can show a full page of a book:[Math]

[darkmonk]

Hello all. I recently did some calculations I figured i might as well share. This might surprise you all, but I've determined the Ipod Touch can easily show an entire page, if you're willing to read it. This is how:

The screen of it is 480 x 320, for a total of 153600 pixels. Compared to my laptop's 1024000, that's not really a lot.
Characters are shown at a fixed size in each font. If I select size 7, my characters will each occupy a height of 7 pixels, even if the character does not occupy all that space. Naturally, it is caps and the letters that extend that occupy all of the height. Horizontally, things get more complicated. The font decides how close each character is to each other. i's, l's, t's and j's go closest together. M and W Occupy a maximum space. I'd say the ratio between character height and width is 5:7 on average, but it's easier to just assume each character will occupy the maximum space.

I chose font 7 because I believe it is the smallest size where the letters are still definitive. That makes each character take 49p squared, space included. Although it would only take 35 in all probability.

Now a page takes about 400 words, at 6 letters a word. This takes 7 characters a word, because of the space. Naturally
this would throw it off, but if you're crazy enough to read size 7 font, you should also be happy to get rid of extra spaces. So now the math:
400*7=2800 characters/page 2800*49= 137200 pixels needed. And what was the resolution of the Ipod Touch? 153600 pixels! This gives a 16400p to spare! In reality: 153600/35/7=627 words, giving you plenty to spare.

So there be my proof that I can fit an entire page onto the screen of the Ipod Touch...Although consider this: The density, 163 PPI, would make you need to have really, really good eyes... but still, I swear I'll do it if I can.

[daffy4u]

Try it and post a screen shot if you please. My eyes are old and there is no way I can read something that tiny for more than one page (if that).

[wayrad]

How much space were you planning to have between lines?

[kevindorsey]

Would be interesting to see.

[ahintz]

Of course you can display an entire "page" (depending on how you define a page) of text on the screen. The real question is whether or not it is comfortably legible. I would say that, given your description above, it most likely won't be. The whole point of reflow with ebooks is so that you can display text as it is meant, with styling, etc. at a size that fits different screens - from a laptop, to a standard eink display, to an iPhone, to a dumb cell phone. Other than as an interesting math exercise, I don't see the purpose of what you're trying to do.

[gimmy]

Hi,

Sincerely I'm not surprised of this because I've just discovered that thanks to the so-called Pagestreamer technology it is now possible to receive full PDF newspapers directly on the iPhone. Let's think about the possible advantages for publishers in monitoring their audience. if you would like to get more info you can visit the following website:http://www.pagestreamer.com/index.html

[GntlmnBndt]

Originally Posted by darkmonk

Now a page takes about 400 words, at 6 letters a word. This takes 7 characters a word, because of the space. Naturally
this would throw it off, but if you're crazy enough to read size 7 font, you should also be happy to get rid of extra spaces. So now the math:
400*7=2800 characters/page 2800*49= 137200 pixels needed. And what was the resolution of the Ipod Touch? 153600 pixels! This gives a 16400p to spare! In reality: 153600/35/7=627 words, giving you plenty to spare.

Bah! Using 49 pixels for each character? Horribly inefficient!

You can do basic ASCII with a mere 7 bits, just use each pixel as a single bit. Add a stop bit for each character, and you get 8 bits, which will evenly fit on a line (320 or 480). Sure it might take an upgrade to your current reading glasses, and some people will whine about reading binary or memorizing ASCII (lazy oafs!), but come on! 320 divided by 8 bits gives you 40 characters per line, and 480 lines gives you 19200 characters per screen. Using the numbers given for letters per word (I'll even leave in the spaces, being the generous kind of guy I am) and you have more than 2700 words per screen. Many short stories wouldn't even fill a screen!

For those few people that speak some other language, I guess we could support UTF-8 Unicode, but then I take away the stop bits! I spoil you...

Of course, to really be efficient, you would simply assign each letter to a specific color, and let each pixel be a single character, but the whiners would never shut up then!



The Bandit

[george-harrison]

Originally Posted by darkmonk

Hello all. I recently did some calculations I figured i might as well share. This might surprise you all, but I've determined the Ipod Touch can easily show an entire page, if you're willing to read it. This is how:

The screen of it is 480 x 320, for a total of 153600 pixels. Compared to my laptop's 1024000, that's not really a lot.
Characters are shown at a fixed size in each font. If I select size 7, my characters will each occupy a height of 7 pixels, even if the character does not occupy all that space. Naturally, it is caps and the letters that extend that occupy all of the height. Horizontally, things get more complicated. The font decides how close each character is to each other. i's, l's, t's and j's go closest together. M and W Occupy a maximum space. I'd say the ratio between character height and width is 5:7 on average, but it's easier to just assume each character will occupy the maximum space.

I chose font 7 because I believe it is the smallest size where the letters are still definitive. That makes each character take 49p squared, space included. Although it would only take 35 in all probability.

Now a page takes about 400 words, at 6 letters a word. This takes 7 characters a word, because of the space. Naturally
this would throw it off, but if you're crazy enough to read size 7 font, you should also be happy to get rid of extra spaces. So now the math:
400*7=2800 characters/page 2800*49= 137200 pixels needed. And what was the resolution of the Ipod Touch? 153600 pixels! This gives a 16400p to spare! In reality: 153600/35/7=627 words, giving you plenty to spare.

So there be my proof that I can fit an entire page onto the screen of the Ipod Touch...Although consider this: The density, 163 PPI, would make you need to have really, really good eyes... but still, I swear I'll do it if I can.

Thanks for the information

[darkmonk]

Originally Posted by GntlmnBndt

Bah! Using 49 pixels for each character? Horribly inefficient!

You can do basic ASCII with a mere 7 bits, just use each pixel as a single bit. Add a stop bit for each character, and you get 8 bits, which will evenly fit on a line (320 or 480). Sure it might take an upgrade to your current reading glasses, and some people will whine about reading binary or memorizing ASCII (lazy oafs!), but come on! 320 divided by 8 bits gives you 40 characters per line, and 480 lines gives you 19200 characters per screen. Using the numbers given for letters per word (I'll even leave in the spaces, being the generous kind of guy I am) and you have more than 2700 words per screen. Many short stories wouldn't even fill a screen!

For those few people that speak some other language, I guess we could support UTF-8 Unicode, but then I take away the stop bits! I spoil you...

Of course, to really be efficient, you would simply assign each letter to a specific color, and let each pixel be a single character, but the whiners would never shut up then!



The Bandit

I just got totally Pwned...
Of course, I was guessing the size at which text would be legible. The seven pixels, while moderatly large on my computer, would be pretty tiny on the ipod touch.

But if you want to know how much info I could represent like that, I get 1159641169920000 bytes/hour with it's 24-bit display, 60hertz, and 156000 pixels. That's about a petabyte.... too bad we can't interpret that, eh?

[darkmonk]

Hey guys, check this out: I can read it fine!

[daffy4u]

Originally Posted by darkmonk

Hey guys, check this out: I can read it fine!

You must have very young or very good eyes because mine started to cross trying to read that. Thanks for posting the image.

[madmaxmedia]

Bah! Using 1 pixel for each character? Horribly inefficient!

To be really efficient you would really try to get the most out of those 262K colors the iPhone screen can display. Each color would represent a block of 3 characters, I believe there are enough colors for that.

Originally Posted by GntlmnBndt

Bah! Using 49 pixels for each character? Horribly inefficient!
...
Of course, to really be efficient, you would simply assign each letter to a specific color, and let each pixel be a single character, but the whiners would never shut up then!



The Bandit