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Comment by fhe | Hacker News Reader

fellow nonlinear-reader here. random access to an otherwise rather linear content format is so key for me, and the responsiveness and user interface are maddening. now i can't stop marveling at paper as a medium -- it got so many things right. it certainly wasn't the first try by humans. we tried clay plates and sheep skin and bamboo chips, until we hit upon paper. but nonetheless it's amazing that paper is still not surpassed after more than a thousand years.

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> after more than a thousand years.

A lot more than a thousand years[0].

I have an iPad Mini with a PaperLike screen protector, and Pencil 2. Works wonderfully. I have a number of apps to convert input, and they work quite well. Apple did very well, with Pencil 2 (don’t get me started on Pencil 1).

I still prefer a paper notepad, most times, though.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus

> i can't stop marveling at paper as a medium -- it got so many things right. it certainly wasn't the first try by humans. we tried clay plates and sheep skin and bamboo chips, until we hit upon paper. but nonetheless it's amazing that paper is still not surpassed after more than a thousand years.

Does paper have any advantage over vellum ("sheep skin") other than being cheaper?

Most of the media you mention are superior to paper in various ways, but either logistically difficult (clay) or expensive (vellum). Paper is the "my car's turn signal stopped working, so I bought a new car" of recording media. It is cheap to manufacture, it rots quickly, it is easily destroyed, and it's cheap to replace.

Well, you sort of elided the chief benefit of paper's cheapness - the lowered cost of mass distribution of the information stored on it. Hence why any given pulp fiction novel had more readers than the Dead Sea Scrolls, despite the latter having sat around for 2 millennia.

> Does paper have any advantage over vellum ("sheep skin") other than being cheaper?

Ink takes far less time to dry on paper as opposed to vellum from my understanding. It's also thinner and easier to use in printing presses. Paper also can be produced in various thicknesses/with various textures to allow for different kind of work. (Think newspaper paper vs. watercolor paper). Paper is also recyclable - you can break down paper and use it to create new paper.

> Paper is also recyclable - you can break down paper and use it to create new paper.

You say this like it wasn't completely routine to do it with vellum.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palimpsest

> Paper also can be produced in various thicknesses/with various textures to allow for different kind of work. (Think newspaper paper vs. watercolor paper

Again, this sounds like it's purely driven by cost concerns. Newspapers aren't printed on paper that's better suited to being a newspaper than the normal stuff. They're printed on awful, kleenex-like paper that will tear in a light breeze and that smudges ink all over you if you touch it at all. But I assume newspaper paper is even cheaper than other paper.

(And indeed, newspapers with a high opinion of themselves produce separate "archival quality" editions on non-awful paper!)

Clay and vellum can also easily be produced in "various thicknesses" (see: palimpsests!), though admittedly it's tough to get clay to be as thin as you'd like.

Reusable =/= recyclable. Palimpest is more like erasing pencil writing and then re-writing.

> Again, this sounds like it's purely driven by cost concerns.

It's not - I was thinking of fine art applications. You can't make tracing clay or vellum, for example. Or textured paper to work with different types of paints/inks.

Being reusable is strictly superior to being recyclable, so it doesn't matter that they aren't identical.

> You can't make tracing clay or vellum, for example.

That is fair.

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