Now, for the colored bitmaps case, how much does the ink cost? :-)
We're also ignoring some edge effects, where bitmaps can be "shared" by sweeping an 8x8 frame across a printed page at the level of pixels to generate the patterns. I don't know how to think about the scale of that problem right now, don't even know if it's easy to do optimally or wickedly difficult, or if Knuth has a solution somewhere in Vol 4 . . .
A black ink HP 64XL cartridge can print 600 pages assuming a 5% page coverage of ink per page. We're actually coverage roughly 50% per page, and we do that on both sides, so we can only effectively print 30 pages with our HP 64XL cartridge.
The cartridge costs about $40. We can expect to spend around $407,060,000,000,000,000 on printer ink for this endeavor, but HP might consider a bulk rate at that point.
The global world product is roughly $77,868,000,000,000. If we all unite under this noble cause (and assume no economies of scale), we can payoff the cost of the ink in only 5227 and a half years, assuming paper is free (which it totally is, it grows on tress!). If someone works out how much carbon this captures, we might prevent further global warming to troll domestic courts.
Now, for the colored bitmaps case, how much does the ink cost? :-)
We're also ignoring some edge effects, where bitmaps can be "shared" by sweeping an 8x8 frame across a printed page at the level of pixels to generate the patterns. I don't know how to think about the scale of that problem right now, don't even know if it's easy to do optimally or wickedly difficult, or if Knuth has a solution somewhere in Vol 4 . . .