| An eink display doesn't handle the same as a regular framebuffer, and the speed of the update depends a lot of what operation you want to do on it and how you want it to look like. With partial updates the latency can be pretty low. There are many ways to control ghosting in a way that doesn't affect the latency too much (essentially, refresh asynchronously - and again - only where needed) For regular typing, I have no doubts it can work without disruption. What is harder is modifying blocks of text. Scrolling quickly. It can be done, but would eventually require a full screen refresh to get good quality due to ghosting again. (Ironically eink demonstrated high refresh rate video playback what.. one year ago on their screens? - another vaporware demo) In a sense, it's like working remotely with a slow modem. The latency is not high, but you need to be smart on what you display (the original vi editor would actually be a _perfect_ fit for this ;)) The question is why I would put up with all this effort and limitations with eink. For me, it's because eink is MUCH easier on the eyes. It's pretty much the only display which is truly readable outdoors. So far I wasn't able to use any single tablet/phone/laptop outside, despite owning devices with pretty bright 500nit screens. |
I would be interested to see some proof of above, I haven't myself seen a usable implementation that successfully controls all those behaviors and latency. People will often point to Dasung but I've used it and I feel it is unusable.