T. V. Raman is the developer of Imax Speak, an access solution for Linux.  

kelly 



URL: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/raman/publications/colored-paper.html


              Welcome To The Universe Of Fancy Colored Paper!
                                      
                                T. V. Raman
                        Email: [log in to unmask]
                 WWW: http://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/raman
                                      
Abstract

   This paper attempts to raise awareness of the importance of
   interchangeable electronic information. It describes a (fortunately as
   yet fictitious) universe where information is exchanged on colored
   bits of paper marked with fancy ink. The the several contradictory
   morals that arise in detailing this universe are sketched out in the
   hope of preventing such a world from coming to pass in our own all too
   real world of electronic documents.
   
Introduction

   It's interesting to consider the question of interoperability in the
   world of electronic information and the ludicrous nature of the
   current day situation that users tolerate after contemplating the
   following (fortunately, as yet non-existent ) fancy colored paper
   universe for a few minutes.
   
Welcome To Fancy Colored Paper Universe

   The fancy colored paper universe is characterized by humans exchanging
   ideas by using fancy pieces of colored paper to intermediate
   information interchange. These colored pieces of paper are marked with
   various types of fluorescent ink to make them glow in curiously
   satisfying ways depending on the lighting conditions that prevail.
   
  A Competitive Marketplace
  
   Companies operating in the fancy paper universe have exploited the
   available physical properties of this universe to create proprietary
   solutions for information interchange that are differentiated and
   feature rich as compared to the competition. In doing so, these
   companies are motivated by the desire to capture increasing market
   share by locking in users to a particular solution. They therefore hit
   upon the marvelous idea of selling ``custom spectacles'' that when
   used to peruse their proprietary pieces of paper deliver maximum
   reader satisfaction.
   
  Cementing Ones Dominant Market Position
  
   These companies succeed beyond the wildest dreams of the marketing
   executives who dreamt up the idea of the fancy spectacles. These same
   executives then decide to link their fancy glasses, ink and paper
   combination to the light fixtures that are commonly installed in
   buildings; this leads to a thriving self-supporting monopoly. To read
   the most commonly used form of paper, you need the right glasses; you
   also need to install the right brand of lighting if you want to read
   anything. And if you want to read anything in the light you are likely
   to find most often, you had better use the right kind of paper and
   sport the right brand of glasses or else, ¼.
   
  User Experience
  
   Life for the inhabitants of the fancy paper universe, as can be
   guessed, is now quite complicated. Everyone has at least several desk
   drawers full of fancy custom glasses, each supposedly optimized for
   viewing a particular genre of colored paper. Not only does one need to
   have different brands of glasses; it's also important to never throw
   away an old pair -all too often, a new pair of glasses from a specific
   vendor may not always be able to view older pieces of paper produced
   for that same vendor's older glasses. Worse, people are finding
   themselves increasingly forced to install a particularly obnoxious and
   fail-prone form of lighting in their homes and offices.
   
   In fact things have gotten so bad that when people want to interchange
   ideas, they first put them down on their favorite colored piece of
   paper (which they absolutely swear by and believe to be the best of
   breed solution) and then pick up the phone to ask the recipient if she
   has an appropriate pair of glasses to view their great creation.
   Often, not owning the exact pair of spectacles can cause the recipient
   to be able to see part or none of the information being conveyed. A
   serious mismatch in glasses can cause the reader to curl up and die in
   agony.
   
A Popular Revolution

   A few renegades in this fancy paper universe rebel against this
   tyranny by using plain blue ink on white paper, but they are roundly
   condemned by the rest of their peers as ``friends of flat ASCII who
   will never be able to express themselves!''. In the meantime, the
   renegades have rediscovered an ancient art -that of marking up their
   information in a manner that can be processed by machines; such marked
   up documents can be automatically projected onto the various forms of
   colored paper floating around.
   
The Battle For Mind Share

   Proponents of colored paper fight back initially by saying ``but those
   angle brackets look like something that escaped from a hardware store
   -they will never be as pretty as our beautiful colored pieces of
   paper!''. But the proponents of those plain old angle brackets
   persist;They weave a fancy web around their creation that comes to
   encompass the world!
   
   One major proponent of colored paper who has pretty much won the
   battle over specialized glasses and lighting by shoving their own
   particular pair of horn-rimmed abominations down everyone's nose sees
   the writing on the wall (paper?). In a game struggle for survival,
   they decide to subvert the budding threat by claiming ``do not worry
   -our colored paper can hold angle brackets too!''. The subversion will
   come when users (too late) discover that the angle brackets on the
   colored paper though mostly standard do have a particular proprietary
   shade that causes it to curl up and die in a blue screen of death if
   one attempts to be so bold as to attempt to interoperate with
   renegades and other non-conforming types.
   
Conclusion

   Exercise for the student; If you have read this far, it's left as an
   exercise to map the fancy paper, glasses and specialized lighting to
   today's (or fortunately yesterday's) world of electronic information.
   
References

   This article was originally published on the Internet on the emacspeak
   mailing list and the original version can be found by searching for
   emacspeak fancy paper on search engines like http://www.google.com. It
   is being republished as a live evolving document on the Internet after
   the author received several private requests for a copy after
   mentioning it on mailing lists in an attempt to encourage the use of
   interchangeable document encodings.
     _________________________________________________________________


VICUG-L is the Visually Impaired Computer User Group List.
To join or leave the list, send a message to
[log in to unmask]  In the body of the message, simply type
"subscribe vicug-l" or "unsubscribe vicug-l" without the quotations.
 VICUG-L is archived on the World Wide Web at
http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html