ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format • Hacker News Board

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#101

Post by jll29 » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

It's a cool feature because it makes the papers more finable, more easily navigatable, easier to read online and faster to scroll through. I am also happy for blind people that they can more easily use ArXive with Braille readers now.

(I'm still a fan of printing the PDFs, because I annotate on paper and refer to page numbers, but the HTML feature is in addition to PDF download, not a replacement.)

One thing that still sucks (not ArXiv related though) is reading mathematical formulae on the Kindle - wonder if someone with rendering expertise could have a look into the MOBI format.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#102

Post by cozzyd » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:27 PM UTC

kjkjadksj wrote: post #50

tobias2014 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is very interesting, because for me it's just the opposite. In particular the two column layout is just more readable and approachable for me. The PDF version also allows for a presentation just as the authors intended. I guess it's good that they offer both now.

The authors don’t format the pdf, the editor does. Authors probably sent a double spaced word document with figures and tables on another file.

You typically send a .tar.gz of tex files (and, figures, .bbl, etc.) to the journal. And then you typically upload something very similar to the arxiv (I have an arxivify Makefile target for for my papers that handles some arxiv idiosyncrasies like requiring all figures to be in the same folder as the .tex file, and it also clears all the comments; sometimes you can find amusing things in source file comments for some papers).

Some fields may use Word files, but in most of physics you would get laughed at...

It is true that most journals will typically reformat your .tex in a different way than is displayed on the arXiv.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#103

Post by FredPret » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:28 PM UTC

nyssos wrote: post #95

FredPret wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It makes sense - for paper. But pixels are infinite - HTML is far better for screen display, which is how people read things nowadays. The extra column next to the one I'm reading introduces a lot of visual noise, and the content is hard enough as it is. I'm sure physicists have all gotten used to it, but it certainly trips me up.

> The extra column next to the one I'm reading introduces a lot of visual noise Papers are generally not read start to finish in one go: there's lots of rereading and jumping back and forth between key parts, and anything that moves them further apart makes this harder.

Ah, that makes more sense. I imagined scientists just reading the whole thing start-to-finish.

I still think a flexible layout is best. If you like multi-columns and have a wide screen, why not display 12 columns next to each other?

With PDF this is not possible. With HTML the content can in principle be sliced and diced how you like it.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#104

Post by cozzyd » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

mattigames wrote: post #96

cozzyd wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well it skips the abstract too, but yes, you can scroll back up to see it.

Yeah, its a bit weird that the abstract doesn't have a link on the left

Probably because \abstract{ } is treated differently than \section{ }, I guess...

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#105

Post by thomasahle » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:35 PM UTC

jez wrote: post #33

It would be neat if they offered submitters the chance to upload their own HTML version alongside the PDF version, instead of always relying on an automatic conversion process. - I can imagine authors feeling frustrated if someone reaches out about a problem in the HTML version of their paper, but they have no way to correct it except by hoping that a change to the PDF fixes a change to the generated HTML. Easier to…

> It would be neat if they offered submitters the chance to upload their own HTML version alongside the PDF version, instead of always relying on an automatic conversion process.

Can you recommend a system I can use to compile my latex, while also making sure the html is going to look good? I'd like some kinds of css style @media queries to switch between certain parts of the layout, while keeping a single latex file.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#106

Post by arccy » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:36 PM UTC

upbeat_general wrote: post #84

ansk wrote: post #47

When I open a large pdf on arxiv (100+ MB, not uncommon for ML papers focused on hi-res image generation), there is a significant load time (10+ seconds) before anything is rendered at all other than a loading bar. Does anyone know what the source of this delay is? Is it network-bound or is Chrome just really slow to render large PDFs? Do PDFs have to be fully downloaded to begin rendering? In any case, this delay is…

I have the same issue. From what I can tell it’s just network-bound and the Arxiv servers are slow. They theoretically allow for you to setup a caching server but after spending a while trying to get it setup, I haven’t been able to get it to work. https://info.arxiv.org/help/faq/cache.html

maybe it'll be faster now with fastly

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38723373

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#107

Post by golol » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:37 PM UTC

IMO pdf and HTML optimize for different things. pdf is easy and pretty. HTML is easy and responsive. But making pdf responsive is impossible and making HTML pretty is not easy. I think having arxiv for well-polished pretty documents, not responsive ugly documents. Most researchers don't have time to make an HTML responsive and pretty.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#108

Post by sureglymop » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:39 PM UTC

matt1 wrote: post #41

For anyone interested in staying informed about important new AI/ML papers on arXiv, check out https://www.emergentmind.com , a site I'm building that should help. Emergent Mind works by checking social media for arXiv paper mentions (HackerNews, Reddit, X, YouTube, and GitHub), then ranks the papers based on how much social media activity there has been and how long since the paper was published (similar to how HN a…

Love the clean design of the website! Looks amazing on mobile.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#109

Post by querez » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:40 PM UTC

golol wrote: post #107

IMO pdf and HTML optimize for different things. pdf is easy and pretty. HTML is easy and responsive. But making pdf responsive is impossible and making HTML pretty is not easy. I think having arxiv for well-polished pretty documents, not responsive ugly documents. Most researchers don't have time to make an HTML responsive and pretty.

Am researcher, care about responsiveness way more than pretty. I am super glad for the option. Downloading PDFs is super annoying. I'm stoked.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#110

Post by smartmic » Thu, Dec 21, 2023, 9:42 PM UTC

z2h-a6n wrote: post #58

kjkjadksj wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The authors don’t format the pdf, the editor does. Authors probably sent a double spaced word document with figures and tables on another file.

Not on arXiv (unless I'm much mistaken), which is a preprint server, not a conventional journal. arXiv accepts various flavors of TeX, or PDFs not produced by TeX [0], and automatically produces PDFs and HTML where possible (e.g. if TeX is submitted). In the case of the example paper under discussion, the authors submitted TeX with PDF figures [1], and the PDF version of the paper was produced by arXiv. The formattin…

FWIW, I recently learned that it is also possible to produce nice PDF papers with GNU roff (groff), have a look at this example: https://github.com/SudarsonNantha/LinuxConfigs/blob/master/....