Vertical orientation

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. 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 4:3 aspect ratio used for classic tv formatting, which is 4 units or pixels wide and 3 units tall, and the 16:9 aspect ratio for newer, widescreen media viewing. By default, most computer and television displays use landscape orientation, while most mobile phones use portrait orientation (with some flexibility 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, and is therefore useful for portraying wider visuals with multiple elements that need to be observed simultaneously. Portrait mode was first used on the Xerox Alto computer, which was considered technologically well ahead of its time when the system was first developed. Xerox product marketers did not understand how revolutionary the system was, and the portrait display faded away while common landscape-display televisions were appropriated for use as an inexpensive early microcomputer display. 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 computes 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 didn't 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. However, Portrait Display Labs leaped 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, HP no longer sells 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. 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 Corporation.