5 ms·

What so it just styles your site to look like a dry academic paper? What use case does this have? I imagine someone out there really needs this and the target a

What so it just styles your site to look like a dry academic paper? What use case does this have? I imagine someone out there really needs this and the target audience is small.

throwlaplace 6y ago
there are plenty of people that appreciate "dry academic papers" - they're called academics. there are also plenty of blogs written by academic types that aim for minimalism.
- diablo1 6y ago
  Yeah but it's very edge-casey and not everyone's an academic so the target audience must be very small. Otherwise why write the CSS for it. If I wanted to write a CSS library I would be aiming for a large audience (but that's just me; always trying to have maximum impact)
  - doerig 6y ago
    Of course the audience this is intended for is pretty niche. Afaik there is only one other LaTeX-like library (the one I built my version upon) that achieves such a style. I don’t expect my version to blow up like bootstrap or whatever at all. Getting a maximum impact with a CSS library nowadays is extremely hard imo. I mean, we already have thousands of CSS libraries that are pretty much the same, right?
  - mastry 6y ago
    I don’t see anything wrong about targeting a small audience...or doing something just because you enjoy it.
  - throwlaplace 6y ago
    lol what kind of person doubles down on a mistake/error/bias after being shown that error? do you really want me to now go and show you how many academics there are that publish papers using latex? or even publish papers in latex and publish to blogs? you probably will still claim for some reason that your initial guess was correct. just take your L and move on.
  - thanksforfish 6y ago
    Did you have any audiences in mind? Were you thinking a one size fits all or just a larger niche? Success of CSS themes depends a bit on fashion, so there's some risk that a popular theme will implode by getting too popular and then feel bland, overused. Or shifts in preferred styles making the theme look dated. The LaTeX approach is sort of an anti-style. It's a uniform. I'd bet that this CSS theme will send the same message (I am an academic, and this content is for academics) for many years. A uniform should actually gain popularity as its used. Although you are correct that the reach of this theme may be limited to just academics who create websites.
  - TheRealPomax 6y ago
    Unless your audience pays you, where's the ROI? And without an ROI, what's the point in going for maximum impact? That's just wasting time and effort that can be spent on other things: apply a stylesheet, and move on to the things that actually pay off.
KKPMW 6y ago
I don't know about everyone but for me there is this weird effect style has on how serious I think the text is. When I read something written in the style of a medium post I sub-consciously think of the material as being shallow. While reading this type of LaTeX style I would start taking it more seriously. But the texts with most serious look to me are non-formatted pages, like the ones on danluu.com or even plain text posts like this one: http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/t/transint.html http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/t/transint.html
- jraph 6y ago
  Me too. Your comment perfectly nails it. I'd guess with a wet finger that it is learned: our brains probably look for clues to quickly assess the quality / trustworthiness of a document. This is why style is pretty important: it certainly affects a lot many people's perceptions. By the way, this is also why I used serious words like "brain" and "assess" and avoided typos: to make my comment look trustworthy. I had to put a front warning in terms of "wet finger" to lower that a bit though. The Hacker News style and context already make it feel far too scientific already. For texts like in your link, I automatically expect they are written in the 90s by some very clever person and when I find some that are from the 2000s or later, I think "wow, this is actually new!". What would be your impression with such a text written in Comic Sans? I would probably be completely lost I think.
kleiba 6y ago
But don't most academic papers actually look very different from this? Usually, conferences and journals provide style files that look very different from this website. I see out-of-the-box latex looks mostly in shorter student reports - although even there, you often get more modern looking styles.
- thomaspark 6y ago
  On a side-note, I made a thing a few years back that does academic papers with CSS, with examples of ACM and IEEE format: https://thomaspark.co/2015/01/pubcss-formatting-academic-publications-in-html-css/ https://thomaspark.co/2015/01/pubcss-formatting-academic-pub... https://thomaspark.co/projects/pubcss/demo/acm-sig-sample-web.html https://thomaspark.co/projects/pubcss/demo/acm-sig-sample-we...
TheRealPomax 6y ago
Ever seen any science prof's course subject pages, with those fantastic ascii formulae, 1992 nav buttons, and grey background with "color:blue" links? Not everything needs this, but some things need this kind of almost trivial improvement to their presentation.

What so it just styles your site to look like a dry academic paper? What use case does this have? I imagine someone out there really needs this and the target audience is small.

throwlaplace 6y ago

there are plenty of people that appreciate "dry academic papers" - they're called academics. there are also plenty of blogs written by academic types that aim for minimalism.

diablo1 6y ago
Yeah but it's very edge-casey and not everyone's an academic so the target audience must be very small. Otherwise why write the CSS for it. If I wanted to write a CSS library I would be aiming for a large audience (but that's just me; always trying to have maximum impact)
- doerig 6y ago
  Of course the audience this is intended for is pretty niche. Afaik there is only one other LaTeX-like library (the one I built my version upon) that achieves such a style. I don’t expect my version to blow up like bootstrap or whatever at all. Getting a maximum impact with a CSS library nowadays is extremely hard imo. I mean, we already have thousands of CSS libraries that are pretty much the same, right?
- mastry 6y ago
  I don’t see anything wrong about targeting a small audience...or doing something just because you enjoy it.
- throwlaplace 6y ago
  lol what kind of person doubles down on a mistake/error/bias after being shown that error? do you really want me to now go and show you how many academics there are that publish papers using latex? or even publish papers in latex and publish to blogs? you probably will still claim for some reason that your initial guess was correct. just take your L and move on.
- thanksforfish 6y ago
  Did you have any audiences in mind? Were you thinking a one size fits all or just a larger niche? Success of CSS themes depends a bit on fashion, so there's some risk that a popular theme will implode by getting too popular and then feel bland, overused. Or shifts in preferred styles making the theme look dated. The LaTeX approach is sort of an anti-style. It's a uniform. I'd bet that this CSS theme will send the same message (I am an academic, and this content is for academics) for many years. A uniform should actually gain popularity as its used. Although you are correct that the reach of this theme may be limited to just academics who create websites.
- TheRealPomax 6y ago
  Unless your audience pays you, where's the ROI? And without an ROI, what's the point in going for maximum impact? That's just wasting time and effort that can be spent on other things: apply a stylesheet, and move on to the things that actually pay off.

KKPMW 6y ago

I don't know about everyone but for me there is this weird effect style has on how serious I think the text is. When I read something written in the style of a medium post I sub-consciously think of the material as being shallow. While reading this type of LaTeX style I would start taking it more seriously. But the texts with most serious look to me are non-formatted pages, like the ones on danluu.com or even plain text posts like this one: http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/t/transint.html http://fmwww.bc.edu/RePEc/bocode/t/transint.html

jraph 6y ago
Me too. Your comment perfectly nails it. I'd guess with a wet finger that it is learned: our brains probably look for clues to quickly assess the quality / trustworthiness of a document. This is why style is pretty important: it certainly affects a lot many people's perceptions. By the way, this is also why I used serious words like "brain" and "assess" and avoided typos: to make my comment look trustworthy. I had to put a front warning in terms of "wet finger" to lower that a bit though. The Hacker News style and context already make it feel far too scientific already. For texts like in your link, I automatically expect they are written in the 90s by some very clever person and when I find some that are from the 2000s or later, I think "wow, this is actually new!". What would be your impression with such a text written in Comic Sans? I would probably be completely lost I think.

kleiba 6y ago

But don't most academic papers actually look very different from this? Usually, conferences and journals provide style files that look very different from this website. I see out-of-the-box latex looks mostly in shorter student reports - although even there, you often get more modern looking styles.

thomaspark 6y ago
On a side-note, I made a thing a few years back that does academic papers with CSS, with examples of ACM and IEEE format: https://thomaspark.co/2015/01/pubcss-formatting-academic-publications-in-html-css/ https://thomaspark.co/2015/01/pubcss-formatting-academic-pub... https://thomaspark.co/projects/pubcss/demo/acm-sig-sample-web.html https://thomaspark.co/projects/pubcss/demo/acm-sig-sample-we...

TheRealPomax 6y ago

Ever seen any science prof's course subject pages, with those fantastic ascii formulae, 1992 nav buttons, and grey background with "color:blue" links? Not everything needs this, but some things need this kind of almost trivial improvement to their presentation.