Prior to computers In the 1932 edition of the
Oxford English Dictionary, the entry for "
frontispiece" gave: "The frontispiece … may be printed either upright (termed portrait) or broad way (termed landscape). If a full-page illustration be printed landscape, the inscription or caption beneath must read from foot to head."
Computer displays portrait display 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 computers 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 did not 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. For the first computing devices a screen was built to operate in only portrait or landscape mode, and changing between orientations was not possible. Typically a custom video controller board was needed to support the unusual screen orientation, and software often needed to be custom-written in order to support the tall, narrow screen layout. However, rotating displays were attempted in early computer-aided typesetting products, such as the Xenotron XVC-2 which permitted the rotation of the screen and fascia between landscape and portrait orientations, with the disk drives occupying a position below or to the right of the screen respectively. The Facit Twist was a video terminal whose A4-sized monitor could be oriented in portrait mode, showing an 80-column, 72-line character display (employing a pixel font), or in landscape mode, showing an 80-column, 24-line character display (employing a pixel font). The monitor could be "twisted" or pivoted by ninety degrees to select the appropriate viewing mode. The
Corvus Concept also offered a display that could be used in either portrait or landscape mode. As video display technology advanced, eventually, the video display board was able to accommodate rotation of the display and a variety of different resolutions and scan rates. 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 Inc. After several years of producing the first Macintosh portrait display, Radius introduced the Radius Pivot Display that could be freely rotated between landscape and portrait with automatic orientation changes done by the video controller. Building on this technology, Portrait Display Labs leapt 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 sold 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. in portrait orientation to the left and a landscape main display in the center Rotation is now a common feature of modern video cards, and is widely used in
tablet PCs (many tablet devices can sense the direction of gravity and automatically rotate the image), and by writers, layout artists, etc. Operating systems and drivers do not always support it; for example, Windows XP Service Pack 3 conflicts with monitor rotation on many graphics cards using ATI's Catalyst control software, Nvidia's proprietary drivers for Linux do not support screen rotation unless manual changes are made to its configuration.
Video game displays Portrait mode is popular with arcade games that involve a vertically oriented playing area, such as
Pac-Man and
Donkey Kong. The vertical orientation allows greater detail along the vertical axis while conserving detail on the sides. Although the early
Vectrex home console had a built-in, vertically-oriented screen, the majority of home games consoles were designed to interface with standard television sets, which use landscape orientation. As a consequence, the conversion of early popular arcade games to home consoles was difficult, not only because the home computing capability was lower, but also the screen orientation was mismatched and the home user could not be expected to set their television on its side to show the game correctly. This is why most early home versions of arcade games have a wide, squashed appearance compared to the full-quality arcade versions. Modern
arcade emulators are able to handle this difference in screen orientation by dynamically changing the screen resolution to allow the portrait oriented game to resize and fit a landscape display, showing wide empty black bars on the sides of the portrait-on-landscape screen. Bandai's handheld
WonderSwan console was designed to be used both vertically and horizontally, and certain
Nintendo DS games, such as
Sonic Rush and
Mr. Driller Drill Spirits would use its two landscape screens together to make one portrait-orientated play field. Portrait orientation is still used occasionally within some arcade and home titles (either giving the option of using black bars or rotating the display), primarily in the vertical
shoot 'em up genre due to considerations of aesthetics, tradition and gameplay. Games made primarily for mobile devices are often designed around portrait mode play. == Modern display rotation methods ==