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From a world-class research university, I hold a Ph.D. in math and am pretty good with D. Knuth's math word processing software TeX. I don't like trying to rea

From a world-class research university, I hold a Ph.D. in math and am pretty good with D. Knuth's math word processing software TeX. I don't like trying to read PDF files of math on a computer screen: Typically the fonts are way, Way, WAY too small unless I magnify the display of the file a LOT, but then the lines are WAY too long to fit on the screen forcing me to use the horizontal scroll bar as the main effort in reading the math. Or put another way, in PDF files of math documents, nearly always there are WAY too many characters per line. The situation seems to be that the journal wanted to save on paper and ink!!!! When I develop a document with TeX, I use the TeX commands to magnify the fonts by a LOT. Bluntly, without a screen at least four feet wide with maybe 16,000 pixels per line, reading the usual PDF file of math is a PAIN. So, sure, I'm eager for better ways to read PDF files of math. My reactions to this OP (original post): (1) I have no idea what is meant by a "middle click", nor would I have any idea where to look up the meaning. There might be a rule in technical writing -- never, ever, but NEVER, not even once in a whole career, on risk of horrible pain, e.g., a barbed wire enema, use terminology that is not very, VERY, essentially universally, well understood without explanation or at least a reference. This rule would also apply to acronyms. (2) For searching a PDF file of math, I have no idea how I would type in the math expression to be searched for. Maybe the software is accepting TeX syntax -- I can guess that even that approach would have problems. (3) For the video, the text is far, far too small to read and goes by far too fast to get any information at all. Broadly I can't make any useful sense out of the OP at all. I'm eager for better ways to read PDF files of math papers, and maybe there is some good work and good utility here, but I have zip, zilch, zero understanding of what is being attempted or how it would work -- nichts, nil, nada, none. Uh, this is not nearly the only place where some technical material could use better technical writing.

mkl 5y ago
> I have no idea what is meant by a "middle click", nor would I have any idea where to look up the meaning. Clicking the middle button on a mouse. Searching for [middle click] on Duck Duck Go or Google would tell you what it is.
- graycat 5y ago
  So, you did a search at some of the search engines and found some explanations for the computer jargon "middle click". Here is a point: Before doing such search, can't be sure will find a good answer. That was my point: There was no way for me to know before doing such a search that such a search would be successful. That is, the search engines are not guaranteed glossaries for all technical jargon in all technical fields. So, my explanation that I didn't know where to find a description of "middle click" was correct -- before trying a search at some search engines quite literally we did not "know" where we would find an explanation. Now that such a search has been successful, sure, we do know, but that fact is a bit weak as justification for using undefined jargon. So, since the search engines are not comprehensive glossaries for all technical jargon in all technical fields, given some technical jargon, a user has to make in effect shots in the dark, has to make these shots dark just to read a description of some product. I suggest that product developers should avoid asking their audience to make such shots in the dark just to read their product descriptions.
  - mkl 5y ago
    "Middle click" is primary school level computer knowledge, not obscure technical jargon. I didn't need to do the searches to know they would work, and people writing technical software don't need to avoid such basic terms.
    - graycat 5y ago
      > "Middle click" is primary school level computer knowledge, While I spend well over 40 hours a week at a keyboard looking at a screen driven by Windows with data mostly from the Internet, I have not heard of or used the mouse middle click in years. The terminology "middle click" just isn't very useful and hasn't been very common for maybe 20 years.
hexomancer 5y ago
Thanks for your feedback. 1. I meant mouse middle click, I think this is pretty standard terminology. 3. You are right, the video could be a lot better. You are not really supposed to read the texts though, the main purpose is to showcase the features.
- leephillips 5y ago
  This PDF reader look beautifully done. It will undoubtedly make reading papers more convenient. I have a trackpad with two buttons. How to I make a middle click? I’m sure the answer is in the documentation, but I’m being lazy, since you’re here.
  - hexomancer 5y ago
    It depends on your laptop. For my laptop it's both buttons at the same time.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      Thanks. I’ll try that after I install it, which will be after I finish watching your very nice videos.
    - larrywright 5y ago
      On a Mac laptop (or trackpad), it’s clicking with two fingers.
- graycat 5y ago
  > 1. I meant mouse middle click, I think this is pretty standard terminology. Well, for a lot of people, e.g., a big fraction of the HN audience, sure, okay. But: Yup, way back when personal computers were starting to use a mouse, there was no "middle click". Then there was, as a step forward -- I remember that. Now here is a surprise: While I spend well over 40 hours a week at a keyboard looking at a screen driven by Windows with data mostly from the Internet, I have not heard of or used the mouse middle click in years. The main reason is that on Windows, at least with the options I have, all the middle click is good for is a fast version of vertical scrolling on the contents of a window on the screen, and I don't find that fast scrolling to be useful. So, I have just forgotten about middle clicking. I'm up on a LOT of old stuff in computing, a lot of it from way back before middle clicking, but not middle clicking -- I just didn't find it useful. Here I'm using my experience as evidence for a Lesson: In making assumptions about what is "pretty standard" for your users, it is tough to be accurate and for a solution work to err on the side of assuming less, a lot less. There is one more point: It is totally obscure to me how fast scrolling could play much role in tracing references in PDF files of math. Maybe the Windows Win32 API permits programs to treat the middle click and scroll wheel any way it wants. If so, then that is something else tough to assume users know and be accurate. E.g., from my experience, I've written a lot of software and a lot for Windows .NET but so far I've never written any code that directly called the Win32 API. So, I have no good knowledge on what might be in Win32 for middle clicking. Lesson: "pretty standard terminology", I wouldn't assume that. More generally I claim that computing is being badly hurt by way too little in definitions for way too much technical jargon. There is a simple solution: When in doubt, and even if not, work to define or at least give a reference for technical jargon. E.g., here at HN (Hacker News) apparently (although I've seen no statement) OP abbreviates "original post".
cinntaile 5y ago
Clicking your scroll wheel is the middle mouse button.
password4321 5y ago
This is incredibly valuable feedback directly from the intended audience, provided for free. Awesome! A middle click is the middle mouse button, typically clicking with the scroll wheel these days. I don't use a Mac touchpad/mouse but Google says it can be done with a triple finger tap, possibly requiring a setting to be enabled under Accessibility. I'm glad tools exist to find more details about terminology that I don't already know. It's always a balance to decide what needs explaination and what a reader probably already knows.
- graycat 5y ago
  My guess for the meaning of a "middle click" was to click on a reference somewhere in the middle of the text of the reference, say, after the authors but before the journal. My second guess would be something having to do with a "middle finger". Click on the middle mouse button? Okay: With an Amazon mouse, can just press down on the scroll wheel. With an HP laptop with Windows 10, I just did that: What I got was a circle with a dot in the middle, above the dot an up arrow and below the dot a down arrow. Research is still in progress in an attempt to discover how this might be used to search for, say, the Radon-Nikodym theorem! Or for something simple y(t) = { y(0) b e^{bkt} \over y(0) \big ( e^{bkt} - 1 \big ) + b} Maybe could do a middle click on an iPhone and then use a scanning, tunneling electron microscope to read the screen image -- give me a few minutes to set that up!!!
  - GiovanniP 5y ago
    > Or for something simple > y(t) = { y(0) b e^{bkt} \over y(0) \big ( e^{bkt} - 1 \big ) + b} TeXmacs finds that, by the way. I just tested it. And each piece of it: I tested the denominator.
amcoastal 5y ago
Goes to show you someone can get a PhD in math, do research at a "world class institution", not know what a middle click is, and still be a dick about your technical writing. Does wonders for y'alls imposter syndrome eh?
- revolvingocelot 5y ago
  Technically yes, but the vast majority of us have met him before. He, or someone like him, teaches Cal I to first-years (because he's gotta teach something beyond his fourth-year five-student moon-man seminar on his inscrutable research focus). Forgive him; he learned TeX before mouses had a scroll-wheel. I had to work with this prototypical fellow once, when I was already out of university; his abilities -- and inabilities -- were stupefying, in both senses of the word.
  - adhesive_wombat 5y ago
    Just think, in 20 years, we'll be bemoaning the neural interface being unusable because it doesn't work just like computers did in 2005-2015ish and we don't get it and kids these days with their jargon like "middle think" being confusing. Hell, it's already started with "the kids" being all-in on bizarre shit like using Discord for everything, and, well, anything about crypto, NFTs, unironically having Internet-capable dishwashers or, indeed, almost anything to do with mobile apps.
amichail 5y ago
Incidentally, have you tried the WYSIWYG TeXmacs word processor? (It is inspired by TeX but does not use it.) Check out this video: https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/videos.en.html https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/videos.en.html
- graycat 5y ago
  Thanks. Have not heard of TeXmacs. Will look at the URL. A lot of people could like WYSIWYG for anything like TeX. Thousands times more people like and expect WYSIWYG. The TeX I use has 100+ TeX macros I wrote. I type the TeX input using my favorite software tool, the one I use for nearly all my typing, my favorite text editor KEDIT. It is a Windows program version of the editor XEDIT for IBM's operating system VM/CMS and written on his own time by an IBM guy in Paris. For KEDIT I have 100+ macros and write new ones frequently. E.g., KEDIT has some good string manipulation tools, and, e.g., I can parse some files, rip out the data, then pull it into, say, Excel and draw a graph or pull it into some compiled language, Fortran, C, C++, C#, etc. and do some analysis. Sometimes the analysis is statistics, but typically I derive my own statistical methods and program and use those, methods not in the usual statistical packages, SPSS, R, etc. That is, I want to work at the level of the data and some code I wrote and not try to use higher level software intended to be easier to use. To me, I want to work at the right level for me. E.g., I don't use LaTeX -- regard it as at too high a level. I don't want their macros and don't want to learn them or fight them. Knuth's TeX documentation is very well written; I find the LaTeX documentation less well written and much longer -- bummer. Some of my KEDIT macros are to help in typing TeX files. E.g., a neighbor gave me a cake for Valentine's Day, and I just typed a letter of thank you, in TeX, using KEDIT, and using a KEDIT macro to insert the current date in the TeX syntax I wanted. Then I have a KEDIT macro that runs the spell checker, Aspell, I got with my TeX software, and do spell checking -- also used that for the Valentine's Day letter. And I like Aspell much better than any WYSIWYG spell checking -- Aspell does better at figuring out how to correct badly misspelled words and one reason for that is that I have my own spelling dictionary additions. Also since I use just Aspell for nearly all my spell checking, I get to use my one dictionary for all my work -- that is, the dictionary should be particular to me and not separately to email, software, letter writing, etc. To address the envelope for the letter, sure, I used KEDIT for that. Yup, lots of people like WYSIWYG and, if they were to use TeX or anything like it, would definitely want WYSIWYG. Uh, going way back, for anything like typing, especially for TeX, writing email, writing software, I like KEDIT and don't just dislike WYSIWYG but deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise WYSIWYG and nearly all it values and attempts. In the simplest terms, I can't program WYSIWYG input, that is automate the input. Not everyone likes WYSIWYG!
gjvc 5y ago
> nor would I have any idea where to look up the meaning https://www.google.com/search?q=middle+click https://www.google.com/search?q=middle+click There. Does your "world-class research university" block the use of search engines?

mkl 5y ago

> I have no idea what is meant by a "middle click", nor would I have any idea where to look up the meaning. Clicking the middle button on a mouse. Searching for [middle click] on Duck Duck Go or Google would tell you what it is.

graycat 5y ago
So, you did a search at some of the search engines and found some explanations for the computer jargon "middle click". Here is a point: Before doing such search, can't be sure will find a good answer. That was my point: There was no way for me to know before doing such a search that such a search would be successful. That is, the search engines are not guaranteed glossaries for all technical jargon in all technical fields. So, my explanation that I didn't know where to find a description of "middle click" was correct -- before trying a search at some search engines quite literally we did not "know" where we would find an explanation. Now that such a search has been successful, sure, we do know, but that fact is a bit weak as justification for using undefined jargon. So, since the search engines are not comprehensive glossaries for all technical jargon in all technical fields, given some technical jargon, a user has to make in effect shots in the dark, has to make these shots dark just to read a description of some product. I suggest that product developers should avoid asking their audience to make such shots in the dark just to read their product descriptions.
- mkl 5y ago
  "Middle click" is primary school level computer knowledge, not obscure technical jargon. I didn't need to do the searches to know they would work, and people writing technical software don't need to avoid such basic terms.
  - graycat 5y ago
    > "Middle click" is primary school level computer knowledge, While I spend well over 40 hours a week at a keyboard looking at a screen driven by Windows with data mostly from the Internet, I have not heard of or used the mouse middle click in years. The terminology "middle click" just isn't very useful and hasn't been very common for maybe 20 years.

hexomancer 5y ago

Thanks for your feedback. 1. I meant mouse middle click, I think this is pretty standard terminology. 3. You are right, the video could be a lot better. You are not really supposed to read the texts though, the main purpose is to showcase the features.

leephillips 5y ago
This PDF reader look beautifully done. It will undoubtedly make reading papers more convenient. I have a trackpad with two buttons. How to I make a middle click? I’m sure the answer is in the documentation, but I’m being lazy, since you’re here.
- hexomancer 5y ago
  It depends on your laptop. For my laptop it's both buttons at the same time.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    Thanks. I’ll try that after I install it, which will be after I finish watching your very nice videos.
  - larrywright 5y ago
    On a Mac laptop (or trackpad), it’s clicking with two fingers.
graycat 5y ago
> 1. I meant mouse middle click, I think this is pretty standard terminology. Well, for a lot of people, e.g., a big fraction of the HN audience, sure, okay. But: Yup, way back when personal computers were starting to use a mouse, there was no "middle click". Then there was, as a step forward -- I remember that. Now here is a surprise: While I spend well over 40 hours a week at a keyboard looking at a screen driven by Windows with data mostly from the Internet, I have not heard of or used the mouse middle click in years. The main reason is that on Windows, at least with the options I have, all the middle click is good for is a fast version of vertical scrolling on the contents of a window on the screen, and I don't find that fast scrolling to be useful. So, I have just forgotten about middle clicking. I'm up on a LOT of old stuff in computing, a lot of it from way back before middle clicking, but not middle clicking -- I just didn't find it useful. Here I'm using my experience as evidence for a Lesson: In making assumptions about what is "pretty standard" for your users, it is tough to be accurate and for a solution work to err on the side of assuming less, a lot less. There is one more point: It is totally obscure to me how fast scrolling could play much role in tracing references in PDF files of math. Maybe the Windows Win32 API permits programs to treat the middle click and scroll wheel any way it wants. If so, then that is something else tough to assume users know and be accurate. E.g., from my experience, I've written a lot of software and a lot for Windows .NET but so far I've never written any code that directly called the Win32 API. So, I have no good knowledge on what might be in Win32 for middle clicking. Lesson: "pretty standard terminology", I wouldn't assume that. More generally I claim that computing is being badly hurt by way too little in definitions for way too much technical jargon. There is a simple solution: When in doubt, and even if not, work to define or at least give a reference for technical jargon. E.g., here at HN (Hacker News) apparently (although I've seen no statement) OP abbreviates "original post".

cinntaile 5y ago

Clicking your scroll wheel is the middle mouse button.

password4321 5y ago

This is incredibly valuable feedback directly from the intended audience, provided for free. Awesome! A middle click is the middle mouse button, typically clicking with the scroll wheel these days. I don't use a Mac touchpad/mouse but Google says it can be done with a triple finger tap, possibly requiring a setting to be enabled under Accessibility. I'm glad tools exist to find more details about terminology that I don't already know. It's always a balance to decide what needs explaination and what a reader probably already knows.

graycat 5y ago
My guess for the meaning of a "middle click" was to click on a reference somewhere in the middle of the text of the reference, say, after the authors but before the journal. My second guess would be something having to do with a "middle finger". Click on the middle mouse button? Okay: With an Amazon mouse, can just press down on the scroll wheel. With an HP laptop with Windows 10, I just did that: What I got was a circle with a dot in the middle, above the dot an up arrow and below the dot a down arrow. Research is still in progress in an attempt to discover how this might be used to search for, say, the Radon-Nikodym theorem! Or for something simple y(t) = { y(0) b e^{bkt} \over y(0) \big ( e^{bkt} - 1 \big ) + b} Maybe could do a middle click on an iPhone and then use a scanning, tunneling electron microscope to read the screen image -- give me a few minutes to set that up!!!
- GiovanniP 5y ago
  > Or for something simple > y(t) = { y(0) b e^{bkt} \over y(0) \big ( e^{bkt} - 1 \big ) + b} TeXmacs finds that, by the way. I just tested it. And each piece of it: I tested the denominator.

amcoastal 5y ago

Goes to show you someone can get a PhD in math, do research at a "world class institution", not know what a middle click is, and still be a dick about your technical writing. Does wonders for y'alls imposter syndrome eh?

revolvingocelot 5y ago
Technically yes, but the vast majority of us have met him before. He, or someone like him, teaches Cal I to first-years (because he's gotta teach something beyond his fourth-year five-student moon-man seminar on his inscrutable research focus). Forgive him; he learned TeX before mouses had a scroll-wheel. I had to work with this prototypical fellow once, when I was already out of university; his abilities -- and inabilities -- were stupefying, in both senses of the word.
- adhesive_wombat 5y ago
  Just think, in 20 years, we'll be bemoaning the neural interface being unusable because it doesn't work just like computers did in 2005-2015ish and we don't get it and kids these days with their jargon like "middle think" being confusing. Hell, it's already started with "the kids" being all-in on bizarre shit like using Discord for everything, and, well, anything about crypto, NFTs, unironically having Internet-capable dishwashers or, indeed, almost anything to do with mobile apps.

amichail 5y ago

Incidentally, have you tried the WYSIWYG TeXmacs word processor? (It is inspired by TeX but does not use it.) Check out this video: https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/videos.en.html https://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/videos.en.html

graycat 5y ago
Thanks. Have not heard of TeXmacs. Will look at the URL. A lot of people could like WYSIWYG for anything like TeX. Thousands times more people like and expect WYSIWYG. The TeX I use has 100+ TeX macros I wrote. I type the TeX input using my favorite software tool, the one I use for nearly all my typing, my favorite text editor KEDIT. It is a Windows program version of the editor XEDIT for IBM's operating system VM/CMS and written on his own time by an IBM guy in Paris. For KEDIT I have 100+ macros and write new ones frequently. E.g., KEDIT has some good string manipulation tools, and, e.g., I can parse some files, rip out the data, then pull it into, say, Excel and draw a graph or pull it into some compiled language, Fortran, C, C++, C#, etc. and do some analysis. Sometimes the analysis is statistics, but typically I derive my own statistical methods and program and use those, methods not in the usual statistical packages, SPSS, R, etc. That is, I want to work at the level of the data and some code I wrote and not try to use higher level software intended to be easier to use. To me, I want to work at the right level for me. E.g., I don't use LaTeX -- regard it as at too high a level. I don't want their macros and don't want to learn them or fight them. Knuth's TeX documentation is very well written; I find the LaTeX documentation less well written and much longer -- bummer. Some of my KEDIT macros are to help in typing TeX files. E.g., a neighbor gave me a cake for Valentine's Day, and I just typed a letter of thank you, in TeX, using KEDIT, and using a KEDIT macro to insert the current date in the TeX syntax I wanted. Then I have a KEDIT macro that runs the spell checker, Aspell, I got with my TeX software, and do spell checking -- also used that for the Valentine's Day letter. And I like Aspell much better than any WYSIWYG spell checking -- Aspell does better at figuring out how to correct badly misspelled words and one reason for that is that I have my own spelling dictionary additions. Also since I use just Aspell for nearly all my spell checking, I get to use my one dictionary for all my work -- that is, the dictionary should be particular to me and not separately to email, software, letter writing, etc. To address the envelope for the letter, sure, I used KEDIT for that. Yup, lots of people like WYSIWYG and, if they were to use TeX or anything like it, would definitely want WYSIWYG. Uh, going way back, for anything like typing, especially for TeX, writing email, writing software, I like KEDIT and don't just dislike WYSIWYG but deeply, profoundly, bitterly hate and despise WYSIWYG and nearly all it values and attempts. In the simplest terms, I can't program WYSIWYG input, that is automate the input. Not everyone likes WYSIWYG!

gjvc 5y ago

> nor would I have any idea where to look up the meaning https://www.google.com/search?q=middle+click https://www.google.com/search?q=middle+click There. Does your "world-class research university" block the use of search engines?