[hoov]

Unfortunately, I bet there are a bunch of regulations, both federal and per state. For example, the 7k memory limit is a state-by-state thing: "Memory sizes greater than those permitted in any specific correctional facility will be rejected at the facility property room" -- from the vendor's website.

[noonespecial]

Memory size limits... hmmm... text compresses fiercely. 7k only being able to store about 4 pages sounds an awful lot like zero optimization. I think some clever microcode might quadruple this or more.

[paulmd]

Same thought. Let's see what that looks like Huffman coded. Or LZW or something. And most importantly, _localized_.

The only technical questions are what defines "memory" (flash vs SRAM?) and whether "memory size" refers to native capacity or compressed capacity. This is a legal problem, not a technical one. But it's probably one that can be solved with a sufficiently-sized ROM that does this stuff internally as a fixed function/trap. Think Mac Old World ROM.

Interesting legal question: if encoding scheme X doesn't code native language Y as well, in a world where people use digital typewriters, is that an equal-protection claim?

Furthermore, do prisoners not have unlimited rights to pen and paper? Is that not an equal-protection claim? Shouldn't they be allowed to possess multiple pads just like with paper? (not with a 5-4 Republican SCOTUS unfortunately)

Localization is not only important for the user base but also sets up the appropriate legal fights. Winnable ones, for this product.

Because in TYOOL 2017, paper = digital. Prisoners have a right to their private legal correspondence even in prison, and have for a long time. The fact that the typewriter is now digital is immaterial and denies prisoners their rights. Eventually we can provide mathematical assurance that the correspondence between prisoner and lawyer is private.

The struggle for developers is to make it sufficiently inert to the point that it is inarguable legally. We want to be able to claim this is a dumb plastic typewriter, but digital.

[clort]

I presume though, that this limit is the limit of characters stored, not the size of the memory. If you compress, of course you can store the same characters in a smaller amount of memory but that is not going to help the prisoner because the prison won't approve a larger number of characters stored. It likely doesn't help the manufacturers any either, since memory is cheap now.

Its going to be arbitrary, but I understand prison rules often are.