My views on printing digital text to paper

Hand printing and sketching with a pencil or ballpoint pen in a notebook is still acceptable behavior for me, at least for a few more years. This Web app will play a role in reducing and possibly eliminating my use of pocket paper notebooks and a ballpoint pen.

Smartphones, hand writing apps, watercolor painting apps, and JotHut.com will all conspire against paper notebooks for me. The transition, however, will take a few years, I think.¹

Now printing as a function of using a machine to produce a paper copy of digital text is a different matter.

Printing digital content onto paper is a foreign concept to me, anymore. I have no use for printing. I see no reason to print.

In my opinion, computer screen technology on all devices has improved enough to make consuming digital content easier.

Software, however, may still need to be improved to make viewing and annotating content on computer screens, tablets, and phones the preferred option over printing.

Some of my objectives as a computer programmer are to:

• eliminate printing to paper.
• eliminate the use of e-mail for collaboration and knowledge management.
• eliminate the use of Microsoft Word and Acrobat PDF for creating basic text content and sending these as attachments in e-mails.
• encourage the use of either a CMS, KMS, portal, forum, or wiki for collaboration and knowledge management. Some kind of Web-based software.
• encourage the use of reading and writing Web-based content with software running on screens of all sizes.

Excerpts from a related post: Stop using e-mail as a collaboration and knowledge management tool

If people feel that it's easier to print a text document for reading or marking up with a pen, then that's a software issue. Ask the users, "What would make you read and edit a document on a computer screen or tablet?"

Why is it easier to read a printed document instead of reading it on a screen? What's lacking in the Web-based software that prevents users from marking up the document like users would do with a ballpoint pen or pencil on paper?

¹ Oct 23, 2013 - Hacker News thread that pointed to http://sketchologyapp.com - "A drawing app with no pixels, with no boundaries"

#kms - #cms - #wiki - #blogging - #business - #email - #collaboration - #blog_jr