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Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

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Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#61

Post by Cacti »

gnicholas wrote: post #54
KGIII wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Well, I understand what you're doing but I'm not sure why you'd dislike PDF. PDF has the great benefit of rendering the same on every system. With very few exceptions, PDF will look exactly the same on every system and will print the same on every system. HTML doesn't really have that same benefit. Don't get me wrong, I think your service is a great idea for those who would like HTML format…

Not the OP, but PDF is bad on tablets and horrible on phones.

What size tablets are people talking about? I find the iPad size practically ideal for consuming PDF papers.

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#63

Post by KGIII »

marknadal wrote: post #35

Hallejuhah, we need to force academics and people who go around touting "whitepapers" to be ripped out of the proprietary PDF era of terrible UX/readability and into modern readable web documents. This is definitely the way to do it, this is brilliant!

FWIW, PDF is an open standard. There exist both open and proprietary readers and creators. It has been an open standard for nearly a decade.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Document_Format

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#64

Post by JosephRedfern »

KGIII wrote: post #52
bfirsh wrote: post #2

We were frustrated by the experience of reading machine learning papers on screens (particularly phones/tablets). There are lots of good tools for authoring HTML papers (Distill, Authorea, etc) but nothing that deals with the vast number of PDF papers that already exist. So, we built Arxiv Vanity: a site that renders Arxiv papers as web pages. It’s still pretty janky, but for the papers that do render correctly, the…

I'm not sure I understand. Well, I understand what you're doing but I'm not sure why you'd dislike PDF. PDF has the great benefit of rendering the same on every system. With very few exceptions, PDF will look exactly the same on every system and will print the same on every system. HTML doesn't really have that same benefit. Don't get me wrong, I think your service is a great idea for those who would like HTML format…

IMO, Reading two-column papers on an iPhone (through PDF) is a real pain -- IMO the format relies on you using your eyes to jump from bottom left to top right, rather than having to scroll from the very bottom to the very top (diagonally). Same problem even exists for single-column styles -- you need to zoom in so much that you have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically.

The need to scroll doesn't exist on a large screen or on a piece of A4, but on smaller devices like mobile phones or even tablets, it's annoying. Having a responsive page means you can scroll vertically as you read, rather than having to make a big jumps (or constant horizontal scrolls) that can really break the flow.

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#65

Post by grzm »

Cacti wrote: post #61
gnicholas wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not the OP, but PDF is bad on tablets and horrible on phones.

What size tablets are people talking about? I find the iPad size practically ideal for consuming PDF papers.

I think part of the issue is that PDF isn't responsive to the size of the device. A PDF is not much more than an image from the perspective of layout. I'd love to be able to reflow text from a PDF such that a single column fills my screen edge-to-edge and scrolling allows me to advance through the paper, as opposed to requiring me to reposition the viewport every time I reach the end of a column. I know this isn't the purpose of PDFs, and I love them in different contexts where layout (including typography) does matter to me. But I also really want to be able to easily consume papers in a way that isn't constrained by the PDF layout.

Yes, I want my cake and a pony. Cakepony.

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#67

Post by KGIII »

fiatjaf wrote: post #60
KGIII wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I understand. Well, I understand what you're doing but I'm not sure why you'd dislike PDF. PDF has the great benefit of rendering the same on every system. With very few exceptions, PDF will look exactly the same on every system and will print the same on every system. HTML doesn't really have that same benefit. Don't get me wrong, I think your service is a great idea for those who would like HTML format…

> HTML doesn't really have that same benefit. Yes, it does.

Not really, look at the myriad rendering issues between the most popular browsers. PDF should result in pixel-for-pixel reproducibility, browsers don't do that in practice.

That's why we still test pages in different browsers and end up using browser specific code to ensure proper rendering - which often only reaches the 'close enough' format.

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#68

Post by bfirsh »

gnicholas wrote: post #57

You might add a contact link so people can easily get in touch. The first-listed personal homepage is kind of insane with all the flashing colors, and it contains dead links (e.g., your Twitter).

Yeah, that's a good point. Andreas's site is a bit out of date. I've made them link to more useful places. Thanks!

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#69

Post by quickthrower2 »

KGIII wrote: post #52
bfirsh wrote: post #2

We were frustrated by the experience of reading machine learning papers on screens (particularly phones/tablets). There are lots of good tools for authoring HTML papers (Distill, Authorea, etc) but nothing that deals with the vast number of PDF papers that already exist. So, we built Arxiv Vanity: a site that renders Arxiv papers as web pages. It’s still pretty janky, but for the papers that do render correctly, the…

I'm not sure I understand. Well, I understand what you're doing but I'm not sure why you'd dislike PDF. PDF has the great benefit of rendering the same on every system. With very few exceptions, PDF will look exactly the same on every system and will print the same on every system. HTML doesn't really have that same benefit. Don't get me wrong, I think your service is a great idea for those who would like HTML format…

Pdf pages are usually based on A4 size which is 210mm wide. Even at full size the writing is often tiny. Once rendered on a 10cm wide screen (landscape) it's pretty darn hard to read.

Also in general the mobile pdf reading experience sucks.

For example you have to download a file (rather than browse to) on Android and the hunt it down to open it.

The pdf readers I've used easily accidentally scroll you to a random page if you make a mistake in where you touch the screen. Kindles probably the best but then you have to email yourself the pdf which is a hassle.

Re: Show HN: Arxiv Vanity – Read academic papers from Arxiv as responsive web pages

#70

Post by jpeloquin »

This is really cool and has a lot of potential. Academic papers are dense and heavily cross-referenced, so experimenting with new display formats that do more to help the reader could make researchers a lot more productive. For example, citation tooltips are a big time saver compared to cross-referencing the bibliography. However, it's also beneficial for every paper to look the same because this makes skimming easier. To get both innovation and consistency is to develop tools, like Arxiv Vanity, that automatically transform the source document. This example makes me hopeful that we'll someday have similar tools for the commercial publishers' papers.

As for immediate tweaks, I tentatively suggest making the text 100% black (like the original PDF) instead of rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.8). The higher contrast will help those of us with less-than-great eyes.

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