5 ms·

arXiv is a nice idea but I kinda hate it. It's not compatible with overleaf for no good reason at all. arXiv expects you to ship the source of the article + som

arXiv is a nice idea but I kinda hate it. It's not compatible with overleaf for no good reason at all. arXiv expects you to ship the source of the article + some sort of generated bib file of a specific version, instead of generating the bib file from the source. As a result, arXiv will fail to host overleaf generated content if both happen to use different versions of tex at the time. But I'm submitting the entire source to arXiv, so there is no good reason for arXiv to fail to produce a pdf from it! Gave up on arXiv because of that. I use overleaf to avoid all the Latex issues, and I'm absolutely not interested in supporting something that expects me to get back to wasting time on fixing latex issues instead of producing content.

btrettel 7y ago
Yes, even though I don't use Overleaf, I had a similar problem caused by arXiv using an older version of biblatex than I do. (I think bibtex's file format has been more stable and might work.) Switching to TeX Live 2016 (the distribution that arXiv uses) on my end as I recall seemed to be more trouble than it's worth. Instead I used an alternative preprint website where I only had to upload a PDF file.
abhgh 7y ago
Just delete the .bib file. arXiv only needs the .bbl file. What is confusing is even if you have both the .bib and .bbl, arXiv doesn't ignore the former, it raises an error anyway. Bad error reporting. Another tip if you're using overleaf: make sure your bibliography related warnings that overleaf points out, are gone too. Overleaf is resilient to these but arXiv is not.
- mschuetz 7y ago
  I think the bbl file is what I meant. It's created from the source and bib file, and arXiv refuses to accept the one that is created by overleaf. I really dislike arXiv for demanding the full source and refusing pdfs, but then insisting you also provide a file that is generated from that source, but not accepting that file unless it's generated with specific builders.
  - abhgh 7y ago
    Oh that's surprising. I uploaded content generated by overleaf (they provide a arXiv compatible dump of your project) a month or so ago and it worked smoothly (after uploading to arXiv I deleted the bib file of course).
    - mschuetz 7y ago
      I tried about a year ago and about half a year ago, respectively. Both times, the exported bbl file hat a different version than the one accepted by arXiv. First time, the bbl version was too old. Second time, the bbl version was too new. First time, I ended up printing the latex generated pdf file so that arXiv wouldn't recognize it as a Latex produced file. That kinda sucked because in the printed pdf, you couldn't select text or access references. Second time that didn't work anymore because arXiv added a check to prevent users from uploading printed pdfs. I ended up simply hosting it at our institute page and abandoning arXiv.

btrettel 7y ago

Yes, even though I don't use Overleaf, I had a similar problem caused by arXiv using an older version of biblatex than I do. (I think bibtex's file format has been more stable and might work.) Switching to TeX Live 2016 (the distribution that arXiv uses) on my end as I recall seemed to be more trouble than it's worth. Instead I used an alternative preprint website where I only had to upload a PDF file.

abhgh 7y ago

Just delete the .bib file. arXiv only needs the .bbl file. What is confusing is even if you have both the .bib and .bbl, arXiv doesn't ignore the former, it raises an error anyway. Bad error reporting. Another tip if you're using overleaf: make sure your bibliography related warnings that overleaf points out, are gone too. Overleaf is resilient to these but arXiv is not.

mschuetz 7y ago
I think the bbl file is what I meant. It's created from the source and bib file, and arXiv refuses to accept the one that is created by overleaf. I really dislike arXiv for demanding the full source and refusing pdfs, but then insisting you also provide a file that is generated from that source, but not accepting that file unless it's generated with specific builders.
- abhgh 7y ago
  Oh that's surprising. I uploaded content generated by overleaf (they provide a arXiv compatible dump of your project) a month or so ago and it worked smoothly (after uploading to arXiv I deleted the bib file of course).
  - mschuetz 7y ago
    I tried about a year ago and about half a year ago, respectively. Both times, the exported bbl file hat a different version than the one accepted by arXiv. First time, the bbl version was too old. Second time, the bbl version was too new. First time, I ended up printing the latex generated pdf file so that arXiv wouldn't recognize it as a Latex produced file. That kinda sucked because in the printed pdf, you couldn't select text or access references. Second time that didn't work anymore because arXiv added a check to prevent users from uploading printed pdfs. I ended up simply hosting it at our institute page and abandoning arXiv.