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Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want. Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giv

Latex can't produce web output, which is increasingly a target I want. Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people (other than giving them the raw LaTeX). The PDFs latex produces are probably the least accessible format available (much worse than a word proeuced pdf, or some html). This matters to me, and should matter more to other people (in my opinion).

voltagex_ 8y ago
>Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people This sounds like it should definitely be a target of a grant. I guess most government organisations around the world are using Word et al, which isn't too bad these days accessibility wise (AFAIK). Can you provide a small example of a LateX document that produces an inaccessible PDF?
- CJefferson 8y ago
  If you grab any academic paper (particularly two columns) there is a good chance getting the text out will be hard, and any part of the paper with maths or tables will be unusable. Sorry. I'm away from a computer now, to make a smaller example.
  - masklinn 8y ago
    The paper "GADTs Meet Their Match" (first I had in my list) seems to work fine, but I don't know what it was generated with.
    - voltagex_ 8y ago
      cairo 1.13.1 is listed as the generator. http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Fresearch%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F08%2Fgadtpm-acm.pdf http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.m... The ACM template fails more! http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/article-templates/sig-alternate-sample.pdf http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https://www.acm.org..., and it's generated by pdfTex-1.40.15
    - CJefferson 8y ago
      I'll pick on one of my own random papers: https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/projects/implied/docs/cp03.pdf https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/projects/implied/docs/cp03.pdf Try extracting "Theorem 2" on page 5, or any text really. I just get random noise through either a PDF reader, or something like pdf2ascii / ps2ascii. We just made this with standard latex.
      - Gorgor 8y ago
        That’s interesting. Did you \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}?
        CJefferson 8y ago
        Thanks paper is from 2003, so I'm not sure. This is just an example. From experience, most PDFs at conferences and journals, generated from pdf, are not accessible to varying degrees.
      - mkl 8y ago
        Any chance you could post the source code for this? It's using bitmaps for characters instead of proper fonts, which shouldn't happen nowadays. Maybe you should put "\usepackage{lmodern}" at the start? See for example https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1291/why-are-bitmap-fonts-used-automatically https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1291/why-are-bitmap-... I work with course materials made in Latex, and students sometimes need/want to copy and paste from them, so I try to avoid these kinds of problems.
- jimhefferon 8y ago
  Accessibility is a big current push from the TeX Users Group. The president, Boris Veytsman, has made moving it forward a big goal. I know that a lot of people are working on aspects of that, but the name I hear the most is Ross Moore, who I have heard talk on making the output be PDF/A-3a compliant. I understood that it is a long way there.
  - CJefferson 8y ago
    I hope so, because honestly, Tex generated PDFs are the single biggest problem with being a blind researcher (I'm not blind, but I know a blind researcher).
lqet 8y ago
What about htlatex? It is quite powerful. In most of the cases, it produces nice HTML pages out of the box, with automatic rendering of figures and mathematical equations into PNG. It is part of most LaTeX distributions. On Linux, for example, just type $ htlatex mydoc.tex instead of $ pdflatex mydoc.tex
- michaelhoffman 8y ago
  For me, at least, htlatex never works just quite right. There are a lot of edge cases where it's broken. If you want to preserve having non-PDF output, starting in something like Pandoc Markdown is a better idea. And I do most of my documents in regular LaTeX.
baldfat 8y ago
BUT that is what makes Pandoc powerful. You convert your latex or your whatever into: (Can we please add Racket's Scribble? It is by far the reason why Racket has the best documentation of any language. https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/) Markdown, reStructuredText, textile, HTML, DocBook, LaTeX, MediaWiki markup, TWiki markup, TikiWiki markup, Creole 1.0, Vimwiki markup, OPML, Emacs Org-Mode, Emacs Muse, txt2tags, Microsoft Word docx, LibreOffice ODT, EPUB, or Haddock markup to HTML formats XHTML, HTML5, and HTML slide shows using Slidy, reveal.js, Slideous, S5, or DZSlides Word processor formats Microsoft Word docx, OpenOffice/LibreOffice ODT, OpenDocument XML, Microsoft PowerPoint. Ebooks EPUB version 2 or 3, FictionBook2 Documentation formats DocBook version 4 or 5, TEI Simple, GNU TexInfo, Groff man, Groff ms, Haddock markup Archival formats JATS Page layout formats InDesign ICML Outline formats OPML TeX formats LaTeX, ConTeXt, LaTeX Beamer slides PDF via pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex, pdfroff, wkhtml2pdf, prince, or weasyprint. Lightweight markup formats Markdown (including CommonMark and GitHub-flavored Markdown), reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, Emacs Org-Mode, Emacs Muse, Textile, txt2tags, MediaWiki markup, DokuWiki markup, TikiWiki markup, TWiki markup, Vimwiki markup, and ZimWiki markup. Custom formats custom writers can be written in lua. https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/
- CJefferson 8y ago
  Well, except LaTeX probably isn't the best base format to write in -- Pandoc's LaTeX parser isn't very good, it doesn't parse (from a quick check) any of the papers I've written. They've tried hard, but I think it's a losing battle, particularly once people start using a large range of packages. That's not surprising -- it's basically impossible to "parse" LaTeX, as it's defined by execution.
  - babahoyo 8y ago
    iirc pandoc's markdown provides the set of functionality that one is capable of transforming back and forth. So as long as you stay within those formatting confines, you are set. This works for everything except table notes a la ```threeparttable```

voltagex_ 8y ago

>Also, Latex can't produce any output which is accessible to blind people This sounds like it should definitely be a target of a grant. I guess most government organisations around the world are using Word et al, which isn't too bad these days accessibility wise (AFAIK). Can you provide a small example of a LateX document that produces an inaccessible PDF?

CJefferson 8y ago
If you grab any academic paper (particularly two columns) there is a good chance getting the text out will be hard, and any part of the paper with maths or tables will be unusable. Sorry. I'm away from a computer now, to make a smaller example.
- masklinn 8y ago
  The paper "GADTs Meet Their Match" (first I had in my list) seems to work fine, but I don't know what it was generated with.
  - voltagex_ 8y ago
    cairo 1.13.1 is listed as the generator. http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fen-us%2Fresearch%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F08%2Fgadtpm-acm.pdf http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.m... The ACM template fails more! http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https://www.acm.org/binaries/content/assets/publications/article-templates/sig-alternate-sample.pdf http://checkers.eiii.eu/en/pdfcheck/?url=https://www.acm.org..., and it's generated by pdfTex-1.40.15
  - CJefferson 8y ago
    I'll pick on one of my own random papers: https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/projects/implied/docs/cp03.pdf https://www.cs.york.ac.uk/aig/projects/implied/docs/cp03.pdf Try extracting "Theorem 2" on page 5, or any text really. I just get random noise through either a PDF reader, or something like pdf2ascii / ps2ascii. We just made this with standard latex.
    - Gorgor 8y ago
      That’s interesting. Did you \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}?
      - CJefferson 8y ago
        Thanks paper is from 2003, so I'm not sure. This is just an example. From experience, most PDFs at conferences and journals, generated from pdf, are not accessible to varying degrees.
    - mkl 8y ago
      Any chance you could post the source code for this? It's using bitmaps for characters instead of proper fonts, which shouldn't happen nowadays. Maybe you should put "\usepackage{lmodern}" at the start? See for example https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1291/why-are-bitmap-fonts-used-automatically https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1291/why-are-bitmap-... I work with course materials made in Latex, and students sometimes need/want to copy and paste from them, so I try to avoid these kinds of problems.
jimhefferon 8y ago
Accessibility is a big current push from the TeX Users Group. The president, Boris Veytsman, has made moving it forward a big goal. I know that a lot of people are working on aspects of that, but the name I hear the most is Ross Moore, who I have heard talk on making the output be PDF/A-3a compliant. I understood that it is a long way there.
- CJefferson 8y ago
  I hope so, because honestly, Tex generated PDFs are the single biggest problem with being a blind researcher (I'm not blind, but I know a blind researcher).

lqet 8y ago

What about htlatex? It is quite powerful. In most of the cases, it produces nice HTML pages out of the box, with automatic rendering of figures and mathematical equations into PNG. It is part of most LaTeX distributions. On Linux, for example, just type $ htlatex mydoc.tex instead of $ pdflatex mydoc.tex

michaelhoffman 8y ago
For me, at least, htlatex never works just quite right. There are a lot of edge cases where it's broken. If you want to preserve having non-PDF output, starting in something like Pandoc Markdown is a better idea. And I do most of my documents in regular LaTeX.

baldfat 8y ago

BUT that is what makes Pandoc powerful. You convert your latex or your whatever into: (Can we please add Racket's Scribble? It is by far the reason why Racket has the best documentation of any language. https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/ https://docs.racket-lang.org/scribble/) Markdown, reStructuredText, textile, HTML, DocBook, LaTeX, MediaWiki markup, TWiki markup, TikiWiki markup, Creole 1.0, Vimwiki markup, OPML, Emacs Org-Mode, Emacs Muse, txt2tags, Microsoft Word docx, LibreOffice ODT, EPUB, or Haddock markup to HTML formats XHTML, HTML5, and HTML slide shows using Slidy, reveal.js, Slideous, S5, or DZSlides Word processor formats Microsoft Word docx, OpenOffice/LibreOffice ODT, OpenDocument XML, Microsoft PowerPoint. Ebooks EPUB version 2 or 3, FictionBook2 Documentation formats DocBook version 4 or 5, TEI Simple, GNU TexInfo, Groff man, Groff ms, Haddock markup Archival formats JATS Page layout formats InDesign ICML Outline formats OPML TeX formats LaTeX, ConTeXt, LaTeX Beamer slides PDF via pdflatex, xelatex, lualatex, pdfroff, wkhtml2pdf, prince, or weasyprint. Lightweight markup formats Markdown (including CommonMark and GitHub-flavored Markdown), reStructuredText, AsciiDoc, Emacs Org-Mode, Emacs Muse, Textile, txt2tags, MediaWiki markup, DokuWiki markup, TikiWiki markup, TWiki markup, Vimwiki markup, and ZimWiki markup. Custom formats custom writers can be written in lua. https://pandoc.org/ https://pandoc.org/

CJefferson 8y ago
Well, except LaTeX probably isn't the best base format to write in -- Pandoc's LaTeX parser isn't very good, it doesn't parse (from a quick check) any of the papers I've written. They've tried hard, but I think it's a losing battle, particularly once people start using a large range of packages. That's not surprising -- it's basically impossible to "parse" LaTeX, as it's defined by execution.
- babahoyo 8y ago
  iirc pandoc's markdown provides the set of functionality that one is capable of transforming back and forth. So as long as you stay within those formatting confines, you are set. This works for everything except table notes a la ```threeparttable```