[Info-vax] HP stopping VMS paper documentation ?

[Alan Feldman]

On Nov 24, 10:44 pm, Michael Kraemer <M.Krae... at gsi.de> wrote:
> Neil Rieck schrieb:
>
> > Us too. As soon as electronic docs were available on CD-ROM (IIRC this
> > was 1998-1999) we stopped the paper docs. It was better for us (cuz
> > the stuff was searchable) and better for the planet.
>
> Is there any evidence that usage of (recycling) paper does
> more damage to the planet at the bottom line than production
> (and disposal) of equivalent electronic devices?
> As far as I remember the production of an ordinary PC
> requires about a metric ton of raw material and quite
> a bit of energy. And it is thrown away after three years.
> Even recycling that stuff costs energy
> and requires poisonous chemicals.
> And all this should be more ecological than a few hundred
> sheets of paper? Hard to believe.

Damage to the planet? OK, I know what you "mean".

Grow some more trees, I say. Paper is a *renewable resource*! It's
also recyclable!

Can you recycle your pdf files? I think not!

Another problem (real) with pdf's is that they're hard to read and
Acrobat is a brain-dead program. Even Preview on the Mac has problems.
I recently was given a pdf by my boss (uh, "manager") to read. It
contained screenshots that were near impossible to read. I printed out
the whole document (several dozen pages!). Now I can actually read the
damn thing, screenshots and all.

I think I read somewhere that all this "paper saving" doesn't really
do a smidgen's worth of good, and just makes tree-huggers feel good.
It may not have been "paper saving", maybe it was recycling -- I
forget. It was _some_ environmental-type thing.

Another step toward unreadability is the new Word default font. The
spaces between words are barely visible. Obviously this was done by a
tree-hugger, surely to allow more print to fit on a page, and hence
less printed paper overall.

AEF