Im curious to know whether people have a preference between reading pdfs or hard copy. I have a book on pdf about 400 pages long. I cant bare to read it, but the hard copy I find pleasant to read.

I know a few people who would be of the same opinion - so what do you think? I might write a program to diaplay pdfs 2 pages at a time, and then 'flip' the page with a click. Would anyone find such a program useful?

I prefer a printed reference manual to online help

Depends on what it is...
plain text > hard copy > crayon scrawled on the wall > PDF


Normal book is best in hard copy but documentation is best in plain text. I just don't like PDFs

I know I'll be in the minority here. I prefer to read from the screen. It is not a "save the trees" thing, it is more a "bloody paper documents tend to get torn easily". Having said that, I do find some documents are easier to read from the page, such as things that make like bedtime reading... LPI in a Nutshell, for example. I couldn't read that from the screen because I tend to be in bed when I'm reading it. I also printed off "Free As In Freedom" because I wanted to take it on my hols, and I don't have a PDA from which I could otherwise read it.

I hate reading from the monitor cuz my eyes can only take so much. I like to lay down and read a book cuz i absorb much more information and I am less likely to get bored and switch over to window$ and start playing a game.

I've always wondered why that is. The monitor eye strain does make alot of sense.


/OT remark: Gotta love the people who voted for "I can't read" at a linux forum. "Me no reed post. Me click box gud tho." I guess that would explain some of the posts here.

I tend to think a bit as Thymox and I don't know what this monitor eyestrain thing is - it's never happned to me

I find that I can avoid eye strain when reading a lot of text from the screen by changing the default colours and having a larger font (or zooming in with pdf files). I find that simply reversing the colours doesn't work: dark blue text on a light(er) blue background (like witeshark's sig, above) is the softest combination I have found for my eyes. Working with a 1600x1200 screen, you can imagine that am usually presented with very small text, so avoiding eye strain is definitely important to me.