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ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

blog.arxiv.org

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Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#171

Post by keyle »

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…

I've got a somewhat related question:

is there a site that lists and rates the various LLM models of hugginface.co alongside their various applications?

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#172

Post by fuck_google »

FredPret wrote: post #103
nyssos wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

One can also view PDF pages side by side, which works pretty well with a 4K monitor.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#173

Post by jpeloquin »

LordDragonfang wrote: post #153
wolverine876 wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm ... accessibility is essential, but PDF is far better for static documents: There's no straightfoward, standard way to read an html document on another platform. Also, the html document may not be readable in 10+ years (unlike most PDFs), and updates are too fluid and hard to track. I think the general problem is that the end-user doesn't control an html document, e.g., for annotation, as a local record, etc.

...What are you talking about? HTML files are readable on basically every platform, even moreso because they are fundamentally text files (unlike PDFs, which are binaries). PDFs need special software, html can be read on the command line . Likewise, HTML is dead simple to edit and annotate. Seriously, name a single device that has PDF support that doesn't allow you to view HTML. I think you're conflating "html" and "…

I just tested saving https://browse.arxiv.org/html/2312.12451v1 to disk using Chrome, transferring it to my Android phone, and opening it on the phone. Results:

1. Saving as "Webpage, Single File" (.mhtml): Neither Firefox nor Chrome even showed up in the list of available apps to open it.

2. Saving as "Webpage, Complete": Opened in Chrome but images were broken. Also very difficult to open with the default file browser because it uses a flat folder view and the sidecar folder pollutes the file list.

I was hoping this would work, perhaps you will have different findings. I agree that HTML is the superior format in theory but usability in practice is often lacking. I'm resigned to using both depending on context.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#174

Post by znpy »

burkaman wrote: post #4
shrimpx wrote: post #2

Since the article doesn't link to any example HTML article, here's a random link: https://browse.arxiv.org/html/2312.12451v1 It's cool that it has a dark mode. Didn't see a toggle but renders in the system mode. Overall will make arXiv a lot more accessible on mobile.

And here's the PDF of the same paper for comparison: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2312.12451.pdf

I prefer the pdf version, mostly. I can annotate it on the side both in print and digitally with my iPad. I can also invert colors in pdf readers to get some kind of “dark mode” easily.

The html version is wasting a lot of space on the right side and the color scheme is awful (dark grey on a brown background, seriously? How is that any better? Edit: disabling dark mode yields a better reading experience wrt color scheme). Also, somehow links to references make another http request and have no backlink?

The html version could make sense if it had more dynamic functionalities: change fonts/line spacing, toggle color schemes, maybe a mini map or some other navigational tool? Also, some kind of support for highlighting and/or annotating?

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#175

Post by fuck_google »

mmis1000 wrote: post #48
ForkMeOnTinder wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely the two columns for me. It's super annoying skimming a paper and having to scroll down and back up again in a zig-zag pattern.

I think the consuming device matters. A ipad or computer have much wider screen width. One column layout is too wide for them for average people to scan text lines quickly. While it looks perfectly fine on a phone. Two columns layout looks terrible on a smartphone, the text is too tiny to read comfortably. It would probably be even better if you can flip it left and right like a ebook instead of scrolling to allocate…

[dead]

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#176

Post by wolverine876 »

jpeloquin wrote: post #173
LordDragonfang wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...What are you talking about? HTML files are readable on basically every platform, even moreso because they are fundamentally text files (unlike PDFs, which are binaries). PDFs need special software, html can be read on the command line . Likewise, HTML is dead simple to edit and annotate. Seriously, name a single device that has PDF support that doesn't allow you to view HTML. I think you're conflating "html" and "…

I just tested saving https://browse.arxiv.org/html/2312.12451v1 to disk using Chrome, transferring it to my Android phone, and opening it on the phone. Results: 1. Saving as "Webpage, Single File" (.mhtml): Neither Firefox nor Chrome even showed up in the list of available apps to open it. 2. Saving as "Webpage, Complete": Opened in Chrome but images were broken. Also very difficult to open with the default file brow…

Yes, that's the kind of issue I was talking about. I wish it were otherwise. As a nearby comment pointed out, epub is a potential solution (and I wish arXiv embraced it - without my knowing their other requirements or epub's accessibility features). It's essentially packaged html.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#177

Post by znpy »

jpeloquin wrote: post #173
LordDragonfang wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...What are you talking about? HTML files are readable on basically every platform, even moreso because they are fundamentally text files (unlike PDFs, which are binaries). PDFs need special software, html can be read on the command line . Likewise, HTML is dead simple to edit and annotate. Seriously, name a single device that has PDF support that doesn't allow you to view HTML. I think you're conflating "html" and "…

I just tested saving https://browse.arxiv.org/html/2312.12451v1 to disk using Chrome, transferring it to my Android phone, and opening it on the phone. Results: 1. Saving as "Webpage, Single File" (.mhtml): Neither Firefox nor Chrome even showed up in the list of available apps to open it. 2. Saving as "Webpage, Complete": Opened in Chrome but images were broken. Also very difficult to open with the default file brow…

Of course, they’re “just text files” only in theory… but theory and practice diverge very very often.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#178

Post by IHLayman »

Fun fact: if seems that if you use Lockdown mode on Apple devices you can't open PDFs from a browser (no official documentation says it but there is anecdotal evidence). This would allow people with Lockdown mode to open Arxiv papers more easily.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#179

Post by 10000truths »

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…

> 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 my only gripe with arxiv and a progressively rendered HTML doc that instantly loads the document text would be a huge improvement.

The default PDF format puts the xref table at the end of the file, forcing a full download before rendering can take place. PDF-1.2 onwards supports linearized PDFs, and most PDF export tools have some way of enabling it (usually an option like "optimize for web").

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#180

Post by [deleted] »

IshKebab wrote: post #128
svag wrote: post #68

The tool that it's being used for this offering is this one, https://github.com/arXiv/arxiv-readability , just to save a few clicks :)

Wow I did not know they have the LaTeX for all the papers and compile it themselves! That's pretty crazy. What if they don't have packages you need? What if your paper isn't written with LaTeX?

[deleted]
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