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For a paper, I would take a PDF over basically any other form of media any day of the week. Being able to archive a paper easily and print it in the form as the
by _Microft 4y ago
For a paper, I would take a PDF over basically any other form of media any day of the week. Being able to archive a paper easily and print it in the form as the author intended it is extremely valuable.
- dalbasal 4y agoYes, if you want to print it out on paper... but don't you think someone might want machine readable?
- archgoon 4y agoPdfs are readable by machines. It's also released as tex. https://arxiv.org/format/2205.14808 https://arxiv.org/format/2205.14808 Huh. this account apparently got shadowbanned. Guess it's another good reminder not to post here.
- xyzzyz 4y agoDo you know what physicists or mathematicians actually want, or are you just theorizing as an outsider, based on experience from completely different domain?
- Loughla 4y agoI'm confused by the reason behind your question (which I'm assuming you have, I guess). Are you arguing that scientific works shouldn't be made accessible?
- simonh 4y agoIf PDF format is the preferred format of those needing to access the work, compared to likely alternatives, then it is accessible. Are you claiming you know better what the needs of professionals in the field are?
- gjs278 4y ago
- Loughla 4y agoI think maybe we have a difference in what accessible means. I'm talking accessible as in, 'I can literally access this', not as in 'I can understand what this means'. I use a screen reader, and unless the pdf is explicitly created as an accessible pdf, it is just garbled up nonsense.
- simonh 4y agoOh ok, fair enough. Are there standards for accessibility for sophisticated mathematical notations? I suppose there must be by now.
- raattgift 4y agoAlmost all arXiv submitters (and certainly any serious one in a category like this paper's math.AP (Mathematics / Analysis of Partial Differential Equations) <https://arxiv.org/list/math.AP/new https://arxiv.org/list/math.AP/new>; click the "other" in "[pdf, ps, other]" and there click Download sources) will supply the preprint's sources, which in mathematics-heavy fields are almost always LaTeX. The sources are associated in a predictable way with the abstract page, which is what should practically always be supplied instead of a direct link to a PDF or other final format. In this particular case <https://arxiv.org/format/2205.14808 https://arxiv.org/format/2205.14808> lets you "Download source", where the source in question is a tar file with four png images and a large .tex file. The .tex file has long swathes of English text; equations are mostly in $math$, although there are some parts that are likely to be less straightforward to access (e.g. under "Definition of the Ricci and curvature coefficients"). arXiv admins and most authors will react supportively to contact from blind and visually impaired people who want to read a preprint. Some categories and broader disciplines have more work to do than others. For example <https://astrobites.org/2022/07/17/making-astronomy-accessible-for-blind-and-visually-impaired-astronomers/ https://astrobites.org/2022/07/17/making-astronomy-accessibl...> I think should link to the abstract page <https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13815v1 https://arxiv.org/abs/2206.13815v1> so that one can find the .tex file (and a .docx), but instead directly links to the PDF.
- colechristensen 4y agoSomeone, perhaps, but in general, not particularly. PDFs are just fine for the machine readability that almost everyone wants.
- lmkg 4y agoWe don't have a good way to handle equations. They are dense and sometimes minute aspects of positioning have semantic value. And this paper in particular, the equations are the core of the content. There's room for improvement over the status quo, but with the standards we have available today, faithfully representing the content requires a faithful representation of the visual layout. So a typesetting format like PDF is what's needed.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gjs278 4y ago
- lisper 4y ago> We don't have a good way to handle equations. S-expressions?
- a9h74j 4y agoIsn't math-uml (math-ml?) markup supposed to create something like an AST for equations?
- strbean 4y ago> We don't have a good way to handle equations. LaTeX?
- gus_massa 4y agoLooking behind the curtain (i.e. .tex files) is a horrible experience. You expect to see $a^2+b^2=c^2$ but you actually see manually spacing, sub/super-index before and after the object, weird hats, ... $a+{}^2\!\hat{x}\ \leq& \ 7\ y_2\!\!^5+\epsilon$
- trident5000 4y agoDo both
- yencabulator 4y agoI'd be seriously doubtful of the correctness of a 900-page proof (+ dependencies) unless it was mechanically verified. For mechanical verification, PDF seems like the worst possible input format.