Now, if this can be integrated with arXiv-sanity.com
Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
121–130 of 138 posts
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#122This will save so many trees.
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#123When the render fails, why are you redirecting to the pdf file intead of redirecting to the abstract? E.g. here (link stolen from another comment in this page) https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/papers/1608.04012/
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Each arXiv paper has a well-defined license linked-to from the upper right hand corner "(license)" link below the PDF and source downloads. If they only re-hosted and re-compiled papers for which they have a license to do so, I wouldn’t complain at all, but re-hosting and modifying content without a valid license is clearly illegal, no?
> re-hosting and modifying content without a valid license is clearly illegal, no? No. Longer version: it's illegal only if a license is required, which is a matter of the copyright law of the jurisdiction relevant to the act. In the US, that question may turn on things like fair use analysis, which can be tricky.
Fair use applies to citations (not of the whole work), parodies and similar creative processes. Similar requirements in Germany include some creative input by the person claiming fair use which usually should exceed the creative content taken from the original work. Simply re-compiling the LaTeX source is certainly not creative work sufficient for a fair use exception. Checking the other limits of copyright law in e.g. Germany ( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schranken_des_Urheberrechts ) nothing remotely applies to this site.
Could you clarify why you think that this site does not require a valid license to re-host and re-compile papers?
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
> re-hosting and modifying content without a valid license is clearly illegal, no? No. Longer version: it's illegal only if a license is required, which is a matter of the copyright law of the jurisdiction relevant to the act. In the US, that question may turn on things like fair use analysis, which can be tricky.
Fair use applies to citations (not of the whole work), parodies and similar creative processes. Similar requirements in Germany include some creative input by the person claiming fair use which usually should exceed the creative content taken from the original work. Simply re-compiling the LaTeX source is certainly not creative work sufficient for a fair use exception. Checking the other limits of copyright law in e.…
> Fair use applies to citations (not of the whole work)
Time-shifting is one of many examples of where copying a whole work was found to be fair use; the idea that fair use applies only to citations is very, very wrong.
Fair use is extremely precedent dependent (and very hard to predict without clear applicable precedent) because the statute law gives only factors to weigh in the analysis.
> Could you clarify why you think that this site does not require a valid license to re-host and re-compile papers?
I didn't state an opinion on that; I said that, because it skips the question of whether license is required, the blanket statement that rehosting without a valid license is “clearly illegal” is inaccurate and overbroad.
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#126Narrow column would be easier. Full screen width is not best practice.
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the OP, but PDF is bad on tablets and horrible on phones.
What size tablets are people talking about? I find the iPad size practically ideal for consuming PDF papers.
The screen of a tablet is large enough to display a PDF. But PDFs are split into pages. That's perfect with paper, where we flip pages. It's very unnatural on screens, especially touchscreens, where we use vertical scrolling to move around.
Then there are minor issues of margins, possibly zooming to make text readable, etc.
That's why PDFs are so bad on mobile. The ideal format is one column text, figures and tables between paragraphs of that column, no page breaks, bidirectional links to notes. That's HTML, I guess.
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HTML doesn't really have that same benefit. Yes, it does.
Not really, look at the myriad rendering issues between the most popular browsers. PDF should result in pixel-for-pixel reproducibility, browsers don't do that in practice. That's why we still test pages in different browsers and end up using browser specific code to ensure proper rendering - which often only reaches the 'close enough' format.
No way. We're testing in multiple browsers because of Javascript only.
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#129Why PDFs in the first place? They're hard to write, hard to format, hard to generate, and they do no good at all to anyone. HTML is better read, smaller, faster, has more formatting options, and can have all contained in a single file. Seriously, stop creating PDFs.
Why the hate for PDFs, I can see why you would not want to communicate dynamic content with them, sure. But for academic papers, which are usually static text and equations and maybe some plots, PDFs do exactly what you want: At least in principle they look the same on every system. If I want to email them to somebody, store a copy, read them offline on a reader etc. I have to deal with one single file, in a format t…
Thank you for your response. I understand your points and will rethink my hate for PDFs.
What I don't understand is why I got at least 2 downvotes. These days I'm getting downvotes for every opinion I express on HN. It's very annoying.
Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why the hate for PDFs, I can see why you would not want to communicate dynamic content with them, sure. But for academic papers, which are usually static text and equations and maybe some plots, PDFs do exactly what you want: At least in principle they look the same on every system. If I want to email them to somebody, store a copy, read them offline on a reader etc. I have to deal with one single file, in a format t…
Thank you for your response. I understand your points and will rethink my hate for PDFs. What I don't understand is why I got at least 2 downvotes. These days I'm getting downvotes for every opinion I express on HN. It's very annoying.
Your question "Why PDFs in the first place?" was answered in bfirsh's comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15534583).
But anyway, in the context of the discussion about this webpage/project, it's not relevant to ask why these PDFs exist. They do, and the scientific community is nowhere near a transition away from them. So bfirsh is trying to find a solution to consume those existing PDFs.
So think as not getting downvoted for expressing your opinion, but more for not contributing to the discussion about this particular project.