1 - Executive summary
This report is a new study of reading, how it works, and how to achieve that mysterious state referred to as "readability". It's targeted in the first instance at electronic books, but is also relevant everywhere else that text is read.
If the ideas in this document work - and there are very strong signs that they will - they will change the world. That's a grandiose claim. But reading is a core human task. We were not ready to implement the much-hyped "Paperless Office" in the 1970s and 1980s. The main obstacle to that vision was: How can you have a paperless office, when reading on the computer screen is so awful?
We are about to break through that barrier. And everything will change when we do.
I've read around 12,000 pages of research papers, books and articles over the past several months. The (hopefully logical) case that follows is almost an exact reversal of the discovery process that took place.
The top-level conclusions are:
- Pattern recognition is a basic behavior of all animals that became automatic, unconscious and unceasing to ensure survival.
- Humans have developed visual pattern recognition to a high degree, and human brain development has given priority to the visual cortex that is a key component of the recognition system.
- Pattern recognition is key to the development of language and especially writing and reading systems, which depend entirely upon it.
- The book is a complex technological system whose purpose is to Optimize Serial Pattern Recognition, so it can be carried on at basic instinctive level, leaving the conscious cognitive processing of the reader free to process meaning, visualize and enter the world created by the writer. I call this system OSPREY.
- OSPREY is how books work, and the same optimization can be done algorithmically for electronic books and other computer screens by developing two new technologies, both of which are described in this paper:
- ClearType font display technology that can greatly improve the screen display of letter- and word-shapes, recognition of which lies at the heart of reading.
- An OSPREY reading engine that will automatically take structured content and display it according to OSPREY rules.