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Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

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Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#131

Post by ttybird »

dredmorbius wrote: post #127
tasogare wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Username checks out. It's not the same: HTML is interpreted and often modified on the fly (with JavaScript), with the source being a click away, but it's still just HTML. On the other hand Latex documents are compiled into other formats like PDF that are distributed, instead of the Latex source.

Correct, further: - The compilation means that there's at least a check for syntactic validity before any old crap is published. - JS-based HTML can be fully dynamic to the extent that there's no sense of an underlying document at all. There are times when this is useful. That is an exceedingly small minority of the cases in which it is used. The fact that it's often preferable to rerender an HTML document as PDF, si…

I talked about the compilation aspect at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29372937 In addition to that there are various checkers for html.

There is lua-based LaTeX and js-based pdf. Just use html without JS.

"The fact that it's often preferable to rerender an HTML document as PDF, simply for readability, let alone archival, should speak volumes."

The fact that it's always preferable to export a LaTeX document as pdf...

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#132

Post by ttybird »

dredmorbius wrote: post #128
tasogare wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Latex is not semantic, the fact it's using macro (which are factoring function calls) says it all. There is some degree of separation between content and presentation, but that's it.

LaTeX as designed is generally semantic (formatting is left to the applied style), and whilst HTML5 is in theory reasonably semantic, in practice, LaTeX tends to be used far more semantically than HTML is. Some of those reasons are technical, though as noted elsewhere in this subthread, economic and other factors seem more dominant, and I severely doubt that LaTeX on its own will address the broader scope of issues r…

Is this why after all these years there is STILL no sane way to make accessible pdfs from LaTeX?

LaTeX is almost never semantic. People are encountered to think only about the document presentation (mostly due to LaTeX's own failures).

As for footnotes being "first class". It's just a macro, nothing first-class about that when compared to HTML's solution.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#133

Post by ttybird »

dredmorbius wrote: post #92
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 t…

"e.g., ePub"

So, at the end you are going to serve html at the browser.

You can do that with web1

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#134

Post by freemint »

dredmorbius wrote: post #92
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 t…

Yeah ebooks made from Latex look horrible to me. Worse then HTML documents. But it is ok for preferences to differ.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#135

Post by dredmorbius »

ttybird wrote: post #133
dredmorbius wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

"e.g., ePub" So, at the end you are going to serve html at the browser. You can do that with web1

The assertion was that there is too great a diversity of device sizes for a LaTeX-based document standard to work, with the strong implication being that a fixed-size PDF is the only output option for LaTeX.

Both sides of that fail.

You're now shifting the goalposts.

Yes, ePub is based on HTML. It is also contained, standardised, and structured (not dissimilarly to how LaTeX itself is based on Tex but with standards and structure). It's also not the only fluid document standard, though the other I'm significanlty aware of (mobi in particular) are effectively proprietary.

ePub exists and is good enough.

It has some issues of its own, including an overly-strong foundation in HTML which could well lead it to many of the same issues plagueing the Web. In practice, to date, it's largely avoided those pitfalls.

But again, that's really not what the question I was answering was about. Rather it was in targeting multiple sizes of devices. And I think I somewhat addressed that.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#136

Post by dredmorbius »

freemint wrote: post #134
dredmorbius wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

Yeah ebooks made from Latex look horrible to me. Worse then HTML documents. But it is ok for preferences to differ.

The stock styling of LaTeX's article or book document types is sufficient. I read them often. The point being that that is a starting point but not the full extent of LaTeX formatting and presentation. This objection is about as valid as dismissing HTML on the basis of the default element styling characteristics.

LaTeX-produced documents can be extensively styled, that's handled via a stylesheet.

Rappaport's Philosophy of Computer Science is one book I'm aware of created via LaTeX. It's quite readable:

http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~rapaport/Papers/phics.pdf

I'm trying to remember which book it was that I'd encountered published as LaTeX source which I had to comile myself. I can only say that it was quite elegant.

There are numerous alternative templates for books available elsewhere, e.g.:

https://www.latextemplates.com/cat/books

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#137

Post by dredmorbius »

ttybird wrote: post #132
dredmorbius wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LaTeX as designed is generally semantic (formatting is left to the applied style), and whilst HTML5 is in theory reasonably semantic, in practice, LaTeX tends to be used far more semantically than HTML is. Some of those reasons are technical, though as noted elsewhere in this subthread, economic and other factors seem more dominant, and I severely doubt that LaTeX on its own will address the broader scope of issues r…

Is this why after all these years there is STILL no sane way to make accessible pdfs from LaTeX? LaTeX is almost never semantic. People are encountered to think only about the document presentation (mostly due to LaTeX's own failures). As for footnotes being "first class". It's just a macro, nothing first-class about that when compared to HTML's solution.

"After all these years" being the four and change since the tagged-PDF standard ISO 32000-2, 14.8 was released, in January 2017?

https://www.pdfa.org/resource/iso-32000-pdf

The LaTeX project announced an a16y project in January of this year. A tool is now available, though success varies.

https://www.latex-project.org/publications/indexbytopic/pdf/

Of footnotes: LaTeX has the macro, it's common across multiple document types. HTML does not.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#138

Post by dredmorbius »

ttybird wrote: post #129
dredmorbius wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A LaTeX document is virtually never directly consumed by a reader. It's first converted ("compiled") into some consumable format. Typically PDF/Postscript, though there can be numerous others. You seem to be unfamiliar with this aspect of the system?

Don't make assumptions about me. A LaTeX document is also virtually never directly consumed by web browsers. In addition to that we are considering LaTeX for the web, not DVI, not PDF, not something else that you compile LaTeX into. And well, given the amount of people that use overleaf I would say that a lot of people (although writers instead of readers) consume LaTeX. (Btw, you can compile html too, try printing i…

That the Web is principally oriented around HTML is something of an accident of history. Note that any data can be transferred over HTTP(S), including, on occasion, either compiled or uncompiled LaTeX.

I am not making assumptions about what you do or do not know. I'm telling you how you're being perceived. You have the power to alter that perception. You've failed to use it.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#139

Post by FpUser »

nice_byte wrote: post #114
FpUser wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"we want cross-platform, sandboxed applications with instantaneous delivery" My version of "we" wants: a) Plain websites that are just documents with links and navigation. b) Yes browser based applications please. c) Yes native apps please as the browser is severely restricted (and for good reasons) on what it allows those apps to do. Each part is equally important to "we"

i also prefer native apps for doing anything, but the collective "we" has already decided otherwise, and there's no point fighting that tide.

>"collective "we" has already decided otherwise"

It has not. Many native applications are doing just fine. I have one native desktop based as a product with about 40,000 customers and is growing.

The fact that 90% are doing A does not mean that the rest 10% doing B are unprofitable or less important. "Niche" markets (I could hardly call native apps niche yet) can be very attractive.

Re: Web4 Should Run on LaTeX

#140

Post by pjmlp »

rchaud wrote: post #77
swiley wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, HTML would be amazing if people weren't trying to use browsers as application runtime environments.

So we shouldn't have had Youtube, Vimeo etc. until W3C got around to making part of the official spec in 2010? The web is great because people kept pushing its limits and weren't arbitrarily held back by bureaucrats. Even though Apple and Google have spent untold billions to push the "there's an app for that" line of thinking, the web has survived.

We had them, it was a matter of installing Real, Flash and Quicktime plugins.
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