Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 147 posts

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#131

Post by crieff »

cr0sh wrote: post #122
crieff wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some applications that will do a full text search of pdfs across directories, but seem geared towards server rather than desktop, with commensurate levels of cost and complexity. Conceptually you could use image magik and lucene to make a Linux solution, but without any added features such as summary or title. I am experimenting with a lightweight solution, but am working out which compromises are reasonabl…

After I posted, I did some searching, and it appears like something could be made using SOLR or Elasticsearch. Both seem to have methods/plugins for filesystem indexing and document importing/analysis, as well as easy interfaces to allow for any language to be used for development. Combining all of that, plus some dev work and such a search appliance looks doable for a home system, using only a single node. For the h…

Thanks, I had missed SOLR and TIKA even though I had investigated Lucene.

One criterion I had for a lightweight solution was to not require Java. No problem with Java, just that it is a big dependency and my perception is that it is not a common install on the laptop or desktop of people reading pdfs, at least out side of the STEM stream.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#132

Post by ridgeguy »

tcpekin wrote: post #118
ridgeguy wrote: post #70

Device is a MacBook Pro running Papers [1] to organize and read references. Works well with over 18,000 references and their pdfs in my database. [1] http://papersapp.com/mac/

How did you get to 18000 references? What field are you in?

The references are from about 35 years of work mainly in materials R&D, neurobiology, and energy storage technology.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#133

Post by ridgeguy »

100ideas wrote: post #113
ridgeguy wrote: post #70

Device is a MacBook Pro running Papers [1] to organize and read references. Works well with over 18,000 references and their pdfs in my database. [1] http://papersapp.com/mac/

Me too, but god the UI is buggy! Shamefully so for the price.

I agree. Version 2 was the absolute worst, v.3 is better, but still needs work.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#134

Post by gcb0 »

csydas wrote: post #9
gcb0 wrote: post #5

not a kindle. their stupid idea to make it just small enough to not fit a page from a pdf, and the completely broken scrolling killed it. even tried the larger one. same problem. they may have prevented the two people that would have read a pirated pdf of a novel instead of buying it from amazon. but it cost them the entire academia market.

It's hit or miss, but sometimes Calibre's conversions for native formats is pretty good at getting the conversion+scaling right. My partner is a chemist and she's had a lot of luck with various ACS publications rendering right after a conversion

most older papers are pdf images. I know it's a dumb format but the screen scroling were not purposeful broken, it would have been fine.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#135

Post by coverclock »

I'm a little surprised at the number of people that are saying "paper" or "printer". I agree. The technology to read complex technical topics online just isn't there yet, remarkably. I do plenty of reading online as I'm working on stuff, and I read recreationally (fiction and non-fiction) almost entirely on a Kindle. But for some stuff, there's just no substitute yet for paper. High contrast, portable, annotatable, and persistent.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#137

Post by milesrout »

crieff wrote: post #91

Had a library of about 800 articles that I read on a laptop with a large format external monitor. Related question: doing the above had some pain points so I wrote an app to give me the ability to give files and directories human readable names. Read, annotate, and bookmark the pdf within the app. Then be able to search across the whole library on annotations and keywords which would open the pdf to the page and para…

>an app to give me the ability to give files and directories human readable names.

You wrote mv?

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#138

Post by milesrout »

merraksh wrote: post #44

Sorry for nitpicking: shouldn't the question be What device do you use to read academic papers? or What device do you read academic papers with? Non-native speaker here, so my nitpicking might actually be useless.

Yes. The title of this post is ungrammatical.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#139

Post by milesrout »

merraksh wrote: post #44

Sorry for nitpicking: shouldn't the question be What device do you use to read academic papers? or What device do you read academic papers with? Non-native speaker here, so my nitpicking might actually be useless.

Yes. The title of this post is ungrammatical.

Re: Ask HN: What device do you use to read academic papers with?

#140

Post by milesrout »

mdlap wrote: post #52
merraksh wrote: post #44

Sorry for nitpicking: shouldn't the question be What device do you use to read academic papers? or What device do you read academic papers with? Non-native speaker here, so my nitpicking might actually be useless.

In this case your correction is better, and would probably be more acceptable to most educated English readers (especially in formal contexts). But the original is still fine, in this informal context. What you're nitpicking is a common and frequently-taught misconception. You can end a sentence with a preposition. Some elitists in the 17th century tried to make English conform to the rules of Latin and those rules h…

You're missing the point, completely. The issue has nothing to do with whether it's okay to end a sentence with a preposition. The issue is that the title is ungrammatical.

"What device do you read academic papers with?" - fine "What device do you use to read academic papers?" - fine "What device do you use to read academic papers with?" - ungrammatical

Post reply on HN