Product Code Database
Page orientation is the way in which a rectangular page is oriented for normal viewing. The two most common types of orientation are portrait and landscape. The term "portrait orientation" comes from visual art terminology and describes the dimensions used to capture a person's face and upper body in a picture; in such images, the height of the display area is greater than the width. The term "landscape orientation" also reflects visual art terminology, where pictures with more width than height are needed to fully capture the horizon within an artist's view.
Besides describing the way documents can be viewed and edited, the concepts of "portrait" and "landscape" orientation can also be used to describe video and photography display options (where the concept of "aspect ratio" replaces that of "page orientation"). Many types of visual media use landscape mode, especially the aspect ratio used for classic TV formatting, which is 4 units or pixels wide and 3 units tall, and the aspect ratio for newer, widescreen media viewing.
Most paper documents use portrait orientation. By default, most computer and television displays use landscape orientation, while most mobile phones use portrait orientation (with some flexibility on modern smartphones to switch screen orientations according to user preference). Portrait mode is preferred for editing page layout work, in order to view the entire page of a screen at once without showing wasted space outside the borders of a page, and for script-writing, legal work (in drafting contracts etc.), and other applications where it is useful to see a maximum number of lines of text. It is also preferred for smartphone use, as a phone in portrait orientation can be operated easily with one hand. Landscape viewing, on the other hand, visually caters to the natural horizontal alignment of human eyes at the same time landscape details are much wider than they are tall, and is therefore useful for portraying wider visuals with multiple elements that need to be observed simultaneously.
The IBM DisplayWriter had a portrait monitor and keyboard with large backspace key, as it was designed for use in word processing instead of spreadsheets. Lanier, Wang, and CPT also made competing dedicated word processing computers with portrait modes. The height of the market for these computers was the late 1970s and early 1980s, prior to the introduction of the IBM PC. However, according to a long-time regional manager of the IBM personal computer division, speaking in confidence to the author of this entry in the mid-1980s, when the IBM PC was introduced, no portrait mode was made available for two reasons: (1) Top management did not want the PC division to undermine the DisplayWriter product, (2) The computer was designed with spreadsheets and software development in mind, not word processing. Thus, it had a keyboard without a large backspace key at first, substituting a key widely used in computer software writing. Within a short period of time, the DisplayWriter and other dedicated word processors were no longer available.
For the first computing devices a screen was built to operate in only portrait or landscape mode, and changing between orientations was not possible. Typically a custom video controller board was needed to support the unusual screen orientation, and software often needed to be custom-written in order to support the tall, narrow screen layout. However, rotating displays were attempted in early computer-aided typesetting products, such as the Xenotron XVC-2 which permitted the rotation of the screen and fascia between landscape and portrait orientations, with the disk drives occupying a position below or to the right of the screen respectively. The Facit Twist was a video terminal whose A4-sized monitor could be oriented in portrait mode, showing an 80-column, 72-line character display (employing a pixel font), or in landscape mode, showing an 80-column, 24-line character display (employing a pixel font). The monitor could be "twisted" or pivoted by ninety degrees to select the appropriate viewing mode. The Corvus Concept also offered a display that could be used in either portrait or landscape mode.
As video display technology advanced, eventually, the video display board was able to accommodate rotation of the display and a variety of different resolutions and scan rates. When the Macintosh computer was introduced, WYSIWYG page layout using Aldus PageMaker became popular. The Macintosh rekindled interest in portrait displays, and the first portrait displays for it were developed by Radius Inc. After several years of producing the first Macintosh portrait display, Radius introduced the Radius Pivot Display that could be freely rotated between landscape and portrait with automatic orientation changes done by the video controller. Building on this technology, Portrait Display Labs leapt into this market niche, producing a number of rotating CRT monitors as well as software which could be used as a driver for many video cards.
The later advent of the World Wide Web, whose pages are largely in portrait mode, failed to result in a widespread return to portrait displays. As of November 2011, for instance, Hewlett-Packard no longer sold monitors in portrait mode, although they have a display stand which permits the user to attach two monitors and rotate either from landscape to display.
Rotation is now a common feature of modern video cards, and is widely used in tablet computer (many tablet devices can sense the direction of gravity and automatically rotate the image), and by writers, layout artists, etc. Operating systems and drivers do not always support it; for example, Windows XP Service Pack 3 conflicts with monitor rotation on many graphics cards using ATI's Catalyst control software, Nvidia's proprietary drivers for Linux do not support screen rotation unless manual changes are made to its configuration.
Although the early Vectrex home console had a built-in, vertically-oriented screen, the majority of home games consoles were designed to interface with standard television sets, which use landscape orientation. As a consequence, the conversion of early popular arcade games to home consoles was difficult, not only because the home computing capability was lower, but also the screen orientation was mismatched and the home user could not be expected to set their television on its side to show the game correctly. This is why most early home versions of arcade games have a wide, squashed appearance compared to the full-quality arcade versions.
Modern MAME are able to handle this difference in screen orientation by dynamically changing the screen resolution to allow the portrait oriented game to resize and fit a landscape display, showing wide empty black bars on the sides of the portrait-on-landscape screen.
Bandai's handheld WonderSwan console was designed to be used both vertically and horizontally, and certain Nintendo DS games, such as Sonic Rush and Mr. Driller Drill Spirits would use its two landscape screens together to make one portrait-orientated play field.
Portrait orientation is still used occasionally within some arcade and home titles (either giving the option of using black bars or rotating the display), primarily in the vertical shoot 'em up genre due to considerations of aesthetics, tradition and gameplay. Games made primarily for mobile devices are often designed around portrait mode play.
For modern projectors using an Hg-lamp (mercury-vapor lamp), turning them sideways will shorten the lifespan of the bulb.
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