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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

#111

Post by jakderrida »

miki123211 wrote: post #46
tarboreus wrote: post #39

One of the reasons is to make the papers more accessible to people with disabilities, especially the blind. I participated in a conference they hosted on this a few months ago, I recommend taking a look at the recordings if you're interested in thinking on this. https://accessibility2023.arxiv.org/

Blind person here, can confirm this. Reading PDFs with a screen reader is bad, reading PDFs that come from LaTeX is worse, reading LaTeX math is pretty much impossible. All the semantic info you need is just thrown away. You can make decently accessible PDFs but it's lots of work, you need Acrobat on the producer' side and might also need it on the consumer's side. Free tools don't even come close. There's also the f…

Hold on... Are you telling me that all these complex sentences are being typed out based on your voice alone? That's insane.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#112

Post by jakderrida »

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…

This is exactly what I was using HN for. But, yeah, in kinda sucked compared to yours. Another thing I was trying to create was some sort of NN model that could use the semanticscholar h-index of authors along with the abstract text and T5 to estimate the one-year out citations. Just for personal use, though. That whole thing fell apart because semanticscholar is kinda crap for associating author links to the same author. I frequently ended up with the wrong professors, which I'd think would be easily fixable for them.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#113

Post by jez »

kjkjadksj wrote: post #55
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…

Most authors probably have no interest in learning html. Also most authors want nothing to do with the work by the time its submitted. It was probably hell getting the project to that point of publishing, they want to be done with it and move on to the next thing going on in their career asap.

I think this is an argument in favor of doing automatic PDF -> HTML conversion for the authors that don't want to touch it, but I don't think it's an argument against letting those who are fine with HTML provide their own.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#114

Post by ehPReth »

jakderrida wrote: post #111
miki123211 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind person here, can confirm this. Reading PDFs with a screen reader is bad, reading PDFs that come from LaTeX is worse, reading LaTeX math is pretty much impossible. All the semantic info you need is just thrown away. You can make decently accessible PDFs but it's lots of work, you need Acrobat on the producer' side and might also need it on the consumer's side. Free tools don't even come close. There's also the f…

Hold on... Are you telling me that all these complex sentences are being typed out based on your voice alone? That's insane.

? blind people can use keyboards

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#116

Post by jez »

tiagod wrote: post #60
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…

I was under the impression the source authors publish to arxiv was a latex file

Ah, thanks for clarifying!

I looked up the submission formats, and it looks like if you authored the paper in TeX/LaTeX, they do not accept pre-rendered versions of the document.

https://info.arxiv.org/help/submit/index.html#formats-for-te...

But if you did not author it in TeX/LaTeX (e.g., Word, Google Docs, etc.) it appears you can upload a PDF or HTML yourself.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#117

Post by kzrdude »

jakderrida wrote: post #111
miki123211 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind person here, can confirm this. Reading PDFs with a screen reader is bad, reading PDFs that come from LaTeX is worse, reading LaTeX math is pretty much impossible. All the semantic info you need is just thrown away. You can make decently accessible PDFs but it's lots of work, you need Acrobat on the producer' side and might also need it on the consumer's side. Free tools don't even come close. There's also the f…

Hold on... Are you telling me that all these complex sentences are being typed out based on your voice alone? That's insane.

Hm tangential question but shouldn't touch typing be well accessible for many blind computer users?

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#118

Post by topato »

jakderrida wrote: post #111
miki123211 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blind person here, can confirm this. Reading PDFs with a screen reader is bad, reading PDFs that come from LaTeX is worse, reading LaTeX math is pretty much impossible. All the semantic info you need is just thrown away. You can make decently accessible PDFs but it's lots of work, you need Acrobat on the producer' side and might also need it on the consumer's side. Free tools don't even come close. There's also the f…

Hold on... Are you telling me that all these complex sentences are being typed out based on your voice alone? That's insane.

I'd say it would be simple to talk type these using windows 11's redux of voice typing. Pretty damn accurate and easy to modify/variate text/options. I use it all the time to make tech/engineering blog posts, faster and more organic than typing, typically, and it learns your technoacronyms. Combined with voice access, it makes it trivial to fully operate your computer (well, at least, browse the web, email, and media apps) from across the room. For anyone who hasn't tried the updated version, highly suggest hitting windowskey+h and giving it a shot.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#119

Post by anonimo37 »

PaulHoule wrote: post #85
mmis1000 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pdf is by design a image format that can also embed text. It just don't have the primitives to properly retain the article structure.

Nah, it's a super-complex system that creates a graph of components, can draw vectors like PostScript, can embed 3-d models, etc. The spec is here https://opensource.adobe.com/dc-acrobat-sdk-docs/pdfstandard... if you look at sections 14.6 through 14.10 you will find quite baroque facilities for representing the structure of documents in great detail, making documents with accessibility data, making documents that ca…

You would normally use a library to create the PDF so you don't need deal with the complexity of the format. A library would likely provide a function for drawing circles that translates the circle into Bézier curves.

Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format

#120

Post by carlossouza »

jakderrida wrote: post #112
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…

This is exactly what I was using HN for. But, yeah, in kinda sucked compared to yours. Another thing I was trying to create was some sort of NN model that could use the semanticscholar h-index of authors along with the abstract text and T5 to estimate the one-year out citations. Just for personal use, though. That whole thing fell apart because semanticscholar is kinda crap for associating author links to the same au…

I did that (used other features). This is how new papers are ranked here:

https://trendingpapers.com

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