Which do you prefer. Hard / soft copy text?

TenLeftFingers

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.

Johnny Versace

Hard copy. By far!

silverside

hard copy definitely

TenLeftFingers

I'm not alone so. I forgot to ask, does anyone think the idea of animating text files to look like a book with pages would make a difference? It would be a freebee of course.

Snaga

Its more to do with looking somewhere other than the monitor I think. (for me anyway)

I used to keep my hardcopy text book and a pad of paper on the desk and jump to them to solve certain problems before banging out more code, it was always easier for me to solve problems this way (drawing diagrams and such while looking at the code on screen rather than trying to visualise everything in my head at once).

*makes smart comment about not being able to grep dead trees*

The Corinthian

Threads like this make me want to change profession...

OfflerCrocGod

Hard copy you just can't beat the resolution of paper and ink.....yet. I'd love to be able to grep books:D; even with the index it still takes time to find useful/specific info in programming books.

halenger

Definately hard copy.

If you've a problem with something on the computer, programming or otherwise, I like to be able to look somewhere else for the answer.

Personal preference I think. I prefer a book even though you lose find utilities etc etc.

casper-

Hard copy. I spend enough time in front of the computer as it is ...

As someone else mentioned though, search is way faster when you have an electronic copy...