Scroll

Scroll

A scroll is a roll of parchment, papyrus, or paper which has been written upon. They were used in ancient civilizations before the codex or bound book was invented, and are still used today in some religious contexts. A scroll is read with one roll to the left and one roll to the right, and with columns of text running from top to bottom. In some scroll-using cultures painted illustrations ran above the columns of text, either in a continuous band or broken into scenes above either a single or double-column of text. Typically, each end of a scroll is attached to a rod or baton for support and to protect from damage during storage and use.

See also: parchment, paleography.

In computer graphics, the verb to scroll denotes the act of sliding a horizontal or vertical presentation of contents (text, drawing or image) across the screen or display window – often employed to show long reams of information that don't fit within the available space for display. Scrolling may be performed directly by software running on a computer's CPU, or it may be done by programming dedicated 2D computer graphics chips.

On the home computer demo scene of the 1980s, as well as the period's computer and video games, scrolling was often an integral feature.

For reading text, a text (column) wider than fits on the screen, requiring horizontal scrolling, is impractical and therefore avoided. A page higher than fits on the screen is more common and not problematic; it requires vertical scrolling to see all of it.