Store data on paper with Twibright Optar [LWN.net]

Store data on paper with Twibright Optar

Posted Jul 30, 2007 22:21 UTC (Mon) by cook (subscriber, #4)
Parent article: Store data on paper with Twibright Optar

The author of Optar has responded to my comments about support for
US letter, the source code now contains the necessary constants
for that paper size. One wonders if this technology could be stretched
to higher densities by using a limited number of easily recognized
colors for the dark pixels. This might mess with the error correction
concepts a bit, but it seems like it should be possible to get at least
a gigabyte of information on a page of paper.

(Log in to post comments)

Store data on paper with Twibright Optar

Posted Jul 31, 2007 21:19 UTC (Tue) by roelofs (subscriber, #2599) [Link]

One wonders if this technology could be stretched to higher densities by using a limited number of easily recognized colors for the dark pixels. This might mess with the error correction concepts a bit, but it seems like it should be possible to get at least a gigabyte of information on a page of paper.

A gigabyte?? That's almost four orders of magnitude beyond its current capabilities... Even in principle, using every single dot as a bit, you couldn't exceed 4MB or so (8*11*600*600/8). If you assume 8 colors, then maybe 32MB is vaguely imaginable, but that has to be close to an absolute upper limit. (Yes, I realize "dot" is ill-defined and that printers have some ability to vary the size or ink-density of individual ones, but I don't believe that capability is anywhere near precise enough to depend on for something like this, particularly given wear on print-heads/drums.)

Also, you'd use a bunch of ink/toner on each page. And assuming we stick to the current claims, how much do 10,000 pages of paper cost? My gut feeling is that it's way beyond the $20 or so you'd need for a 2GB thumb drive (but since I never buy paper, I have no idea).

Greg