41–50 of 141 posts
Seeing the Gemini 3 capabilities, I can imagine a near future where file formats are effectively irrelevant.
I don't think HTML is the right approach. HTML is better than PDF, but it is still a format for displaying/rendering. the actual paper content format should be separated from its rendering. i.e. it should contain abstract, sections, equations, figures, citations etc. but it shouldn't have font sizes, layout etc. the viewer platforms then should be able to style the content differently.
> HTML is better than PDF I disagree. PDF is the most desirable format for printed media and its analogues. Any time I plan to seriously entertain a paper from Arxiv, I print it out first. I prefer to have the author's original intent in hand. Arbitrary page breaks and layout shifts that are a result of my specific hardware/software configuration are not desirable to me in this context of use.
Seeing the Gemini 3 capabilities, I can imagine a near future where file formats are effectively irrelevant.
Why do we like HTML more than pdfs? HTML rendering requires you to be connected to the internet, or setting up the images and mathJax locally. A PDF just works. HTML obviously supports dynamic embedding, such as programs, much better but people just usually post a github.io page with the paper.
Pandoc can convert to svg. It can then be inlined in html. Looks just like latex, though copy/paste isn't very useful
I don't think HTML is the right approach. HTML is better than PDF, but it is still a format for displaying/rendering. the actual paper content format should be separated from its rendering. i.e. it should contain abstract, sections, equations, figures, citations etc. but it shouldn't have font sizes, layout etc. the viewer platforms then should be able to style the content differently.
They are converting to HTML to make the content more accessible. Accessibility in this context means a11y, in effect ”more accessible” equates to ”more compatible with screen readers”.
While PDF documents can be made accessible, it is way easier to do it in HTML, where browsers build an actual AOM (accessibility object model) tree and expose it to screen readers.
>it should contain abstract, sections, equations, figures, citations etc.
So , , , , , etc.
It's extremely easy to convert HTML/CSS to a PDF with the print to PDF feature of the browser. All papers should be in HTML/CSS or Tex then just simply converted to PDF. Why are we even talking about this?
Either way it gets shoehorned.
I don't think HTML is the right approach. HTML is better than PDF, but it is still a format for displaying/rendering. the actual paper content format should be separated from its rendering. i.e. it should contain abstract, sections, equations, figures, citations etc. but it shouldn't have font sizes, layout etc. the viewer platforms then should be able to style the content differently.
HTML alone is in fact not a format for displaying/rendering. Done properly, it is a structural representation of the content. (This is often called ”semantic HTML”.) They are converting to HTML to make the content more accessible. Accessibility in this context means a11y, in effect ”more accessible” equates to ”more compatible with screen readers”. While PDF documents can be made accessible, it is way easier to do it…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> HTML is better than PDF I disagree. PDF is the most desirable format for printed media and its analogues. Any time I plan to seriously entertain a paper from Arxiv, I print it out first. I prefer to have the author's original intent in hand. Arbitrary page breaks and layout shifts that are a result of my specific hardware/software configuration are not desirable to me in this context of use.
I agree that PDF is best for things that are meant to be printed, no questions. But I wonder how common actually printing those papers is? In research and in embedded hardware both, I've met some people who had entire stacks of papers printed out - research papers or datasheets or application notes - but also people who had 3 monitors and 64GB of RAM and all the papers open as browser tabs. I'm far closer to the latt…