Hi everyone! An issue that has perplexed me about MiniDisc is the fact that more decks will be using multi-line displays to show disc and track titles. This is because the cost of small alpha-numeric multi-line dot-matrix displays is being reduced and the Eureka 147 DAB system is encouraging the use of these displays on the receivers. As well, small-area bitmap displays are now in vogue as far as consumer electronics is concerned. A couple of examples that I cite include 1. the Pioneer LS-5 lifestyle music system which has a large dot-matrix LCD display on a board that can be tilted by use of UP-DOWN buttons on the main console 2. A lot of new-model mobile phones such as my Nokia 5110 GSM phone 3. The Blaupunkt Bremen and New York car stereo units with a menu that reminds me of a new automatic teller machine As for car stereos, the trend is for those units which play their media in the head unit to have the media insertion slot hidden behind a drop-down or tilt-down front panel. This has encouraged manufacturers to have a larger area for the display and control surface. For bookshelf music systems, the bigger and flashier the system display is, the more it is likely to attract customer attention. One thing that should be looked at is exploiting the multi-line displays on these units by using control characters in order to wrap text onto subsequent lines. One character would force the machine to put the rest of the text on a subsequent line in all multi-line displays, while another character could move text to a sobsequent line if it falls within the last 80 percent of the line. The first character would be useful to split a "song title" and "performer" display so the song title appears on one line or as one paragraph while the performer appears on the next line or paragraph. The second character would be useful to prevent word-splitting when describing a title. These control characters could then allow a person to have greater control over how the title appears on a multi-line display. Existing MD decks and MD hardware with single-line displays would have to either ignore the characters or render them as spaces on their one-line displays. If the MiniDisc specification is being revised, the issue of control characters should be looked at, because when the format was developed, the alpha-numeric 8-16 character single line or dual line display was considered the display available for the equipment's price range. Now with the four-line display and the increasingly-ubiquitous bitmap display appearing in consumer electronics, this issue of multi-line titles is now a reality. With regards, Simon Mackay ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
