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 :)
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ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
241–250 of 325 posts
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#242I just hope they don't stop to offer the papers in PDF. Even when I'm on a computer, I still prefer to read PDFs.
There is a taste component to it of course, but the history of PDF shows that it's the wrong format for reading on a computer. It was originally meant to be the end result of a publishing process before printing, a layer that sits right between the publishing software and the postscript that gets sent to the printer. This makes the PDF format quite inflexible for reading on a computer, with it being impossible to properly zoom or adjust the reading experience.
Unfortunately many institutions and businesses have ignored its limitation because PDF turned out to be an obvious-but-naive to put a 'sheets of paper' metaphor into a computer system, which in the 1990s appealed to tech illiterate folks doing bare-bones computerization of existing paper systems. So later we got complicated and error-prone tools for editing PDFs, and many random additions to the spec to allow for unusual use cases.
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#243Saw it last night ! I was sooo happy ! Reading papers on phone is a nightmare.
Well done guys !
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#244[deleted]
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#245Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hilariously, I would probably tolerate the HTML version a lot better if it had the font from the PDF (and FWIW, the answer for me is "no: I don't work with LaTeX at all... I just read a lot of papers").
If you disable the font rule :root, [data-theme=light] { /* --text-font-family: "freight-sans-pro"; } it switches to "Noto Serif" that is way easier on the eyes.
I hard override the font in browser, designers never get it right.
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just zoom the smartphone into one column. Problem solved.
And then you will have to scroll both top bottom and left right, a even worst experience.
It's about "One column layout is too wide" - if you zoom, it's not too wide anymore, also smartphones have narrow screen, not wide, and tablets can do that too afaik.
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#247Earlier 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…
To display two column layout you need a tall screen, now wide. If you display two column layout on a short wide screen, you have to scroll it up and down in zigzag pattern to read one page.
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#248The 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?
They specify what version of texlive they use. This is significantly better than what publishers offer (usually a really old latex version, not even pdflatex).
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#249I just hope they don't stop to offer the papers in PDF. Even when I'm on a computer, I still prefer to read PDFs.
I know of no-one who provides only HTML to arxiv, it's either latex, or doc/odt, so the PDFs should always be there.
Re: ArXiv now offers papers in HTML format
#250Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean, how do I save it locally on one platform and read it on any platform? Or share it with someone else to read (without them downloading software)? I.e., we don't have a standard, local, single-file html format.
You're right. We could have such a format if browser and os vendors were interested in supporting such a use case. Unfortunately, they aren't. On the browser side, supporting all-in-one html files can be as simple a reading a single multipart-encoded page. Heck, if they support automatically serializing all external resources as datauris when saving pages, then most browsers will be able to open them without any modi…
There's epub as one file html document.