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Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

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Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#91

Post by freemint »

dredmorbius wrote: post #60
jacobmischka wrote: post #3

PDF fetishism and blindly disliking HTML because it's associated with the current web is such an old trope. HTML and CSS are good at making hypertext documents, they are in fact much better at that than at making applications, despite that being the most popular use case lately. No one is making you write web apps, websites are still first class citizens for web browsers.

LaTeX is not equivalent to PDF, though that is one publishing format it supports. HTML lacks numerous features which a first-class document-specification language should have, including grid layouts (only very recently possible), footnotes and sidenotes, and formulae. The promise of LaTeX is that documents could be defined strictly in semantic terms, though my belief is that this would last for approximately 37.229 m…

How would you support multiple screen resolutions or even resizing windows with precompiled layouting?

If layouting (an computationally expensive step) is done at "run-time" what would precompiled even mean?

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#92

Post by dredmorbius »

whatever1 wrote: post #5

Can’t wait to hardcode styling for each individual display that is out there! go latex! Make everyone miserable, not just the math people.

LaTeX can output to fluid-format document types (e.g., ePub), and there are tools that will convert between numerous output formats (pandoc).

Even if you're looking at mobile displays, there's a finite set, and those can either be punted or targeted precisely at the 4", 5", 6", 8", and 10" device sizes which are most common.

Using an e-ink device, I'd really prefer more Web content were paginated. I tend to rely on the EinkBro web browser for anything over a page or two in length simply because I can page through that rather than deal with the fussiness of scrolling.

Once you reach a sufficiently large display, physical pragmatics come to the fore. We've settled on books that are mostly 8--14" or so diagonal measure because that's what's convenient to hold and read. There are smaller and larger exceptions (pocketbooks and other miniatures, coffee-table books and atlases), but those are 1) less convenient and 2) clear compromises between format, material, ease of reading, and other factors.

For a sufficiently-large desktop display, a standard quarto/folio print format displayed 2-up is usually preferable. Scaling from that or presenting 1-up is really the desktop / window manager's problem.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#93

Post by DaiPlusPlus »

dredmorbius wrote: post #87
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by “runtime compiled”, exactly?

With LaTeX, the document creator must compile the document , through a fairly persnickety processor (latex, tetex, or an equivalent). Whilst that may still pass poorly-structured documents and result in poorly-formed output, straight-up illegal syntax won't make. HTML has no such requirements. There's absolutely nothing stopping you from posting that in the first place. Throw something at a browser, and it will try i…

> Moreover, the commercial Web has a selection process and corresponding evolutionary path which has come to be seen as less than optimal for those seeking high-value, high-relevance content. It is in fact hostile to such content, on multiple bases.

That aspect has absolutely nothing to do with the technical format of a document.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#94

Post by rchaud »

poetically wrote: post #52
minaguib wrote: post #6

I see the author's point. However it focuses almost entirely on the idea of documents/information retrieval. The web would not be at today's scale if it focused on written-word documentation. For better or worse, most individuals are spending their time online for entertainment.

Which is probably why most of the web now consists of SEO optimized entertainment that some people take way too seriously, e.g. conspiracy theories.

One of the worst ones is "[famous person's] net worth". People take the Google-provided snippet (sourced from some garbage website) at face value.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#95

Post by kizer »

poetically wrote: post #55
NavinF wrote: post #7

I was certain the title was a joke. After reading the article, I’ll continue to assume this is an elaborate joke for the sake of my sanity.

It's obviously a joke. He's using hyperbole to make a point.

That's what everyone is missing. It's just to make a point... but people are taking it literally. He means "back to the basics"; e.g., plain text.

It's a good title because I laughed when I read it and it made me want to read the article.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#96

Post by dnautics »

infogulch wrote: post #88
dnautics wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The promise of LaTeX is that documents could be defined strictly in semantic terms, though my belief is that this would last for approximately 37.229 minutes after such a proposal actually hit the Web. I mean, that already failed for LaTeX. To me it's kind of an unwieldy pile of wierd imperative imports. I did write my thesis in it, but for the most part it was "smash these imports together, pray for the best, if i…

What would sane defaults for css be?

Maybe I spoke too soon -- Thinking back (and I could be wrong about this) but the "top" of the style sheet cascade is supposed to be defined by the browser? So I guess it's the browers' responsibility?

I guess the point I was trying to make is that if you just type only non-layout LaTeX it looks reasonably good, yeah, it does format it with super-wide margins (shrug), but if you do that with html you get mouth spiders.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#97

Post by leodriesch »

This is not constructive in my opinion. Some people say that the web was better in its early days when there was just HTML. HTML or LaTex, which the author recommends, may be sufficient for documents, but if you want that kind of an experience you can just use reader mode.

But opening an interactive prototype in Figma just by clicking a link or planning an event with Doodle just by clicking a link is not something I’d want to miss out on just to remove ads and cookie banners from websites. Sure loading speed would also be increased, but internet connections are getting faster and faster and most western countries have quite good coverage of fast networks.

The author also states that he/she doesn’t want to learn new web tech all the time, while server rendered PHP still works and powers a large portion of the internet. The web platform also doesn’t really have breaking changes, so your past knowledge still applies and old pages continue to work.

To me this is just an overreaction that doesn’t consider lots of usecases for the web.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#98

Post by pharke »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #73
azangru wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So write an application multiple times in multiple languages, package it into different packages, and distribute them through app stores? Oh, and desktop Linux users are out of luck because their market share is so tiny, and their distros are so numerous and chaotic that no-one is going to bother spending time and money on building applications for those poor sods. Is this the idea?

Or target the JVM, ship jar files, and solve the problem ~25 years ago.

We need an improvement, not a regression.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#100

Post by ttybird »

dredmorbius wrote: post #89
zozbot234 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Footnotes and sidenotes can be realized as elements and styled/scripted to appear as actual footnotes on print media. Formulas are supported via MathML.

Neither are native first-class elements of plain HTML.

Nor a "first-class" TeX element either. \footnote is just a macro.
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