Continuous Paper

The HoMT workshop at the University of Pennsylvania is a place for presenting work in progress, and this is such work. In the text below, I have omitted references, and mention of "the handout" doesn't mean anything here, except that I have linked to things on the handout that exist on the Web. If you'd like to correspond about the topic and correct or inform me about the use of print-based interfaces, please contact me: nickm at this domain. Update, 1 March 2004: I made several changes, thanks to comments from Tom Van Vleck, whose work I cite in my talk. Update, 20 August 2004: Further work on this topic has resulted in "Continuous Paper: Print Interfaces and Early Computer Writing," a talk given at ISEA. My topic today is what some call "electronic writing," although "computer writing" is also a reasonable term for it. "Electronic writing" makes this sound a bit like a quadraphonic hi-fi, while "computer writing" is something you might expect to find in PC Magazine -- the helpful advice column about defragmenting your hard disk and such.