4 ms·

What would be an alternative? A web page? LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but it is very well understood, it doesn't churn needlessly. That is extremely valua

What would be an alternative? A web page? LaTeX has a steep learning curve, but it is very well understood, it doesn't churn needlessly. That is extremely valuable if you don't want to spend your time learning again and again how to do the same thing this week. PDF with all its problems are also well understood, they can be archived. Some nation states require certain documents to be archived in PDF. I.e. you can be relatively sure that there will be PDF readers in 50 or 100 years that can display and print our PDFs. I have my doubts whether it will be possible to display a modern web page of today in a browser in 100 years without constantly maintaining the web page. > I cam understand e.g. biologists doing it, but when CS folks who should know alternatives do it, I'm evermore baffled, especially given the awkwardness of using e.g. LaTeX. In my experience it is the other way around: mathematicians, computer scientists and physicists are those using LaTeX the most. Probably, because they are already familiar with programming languages. Hence a markup language is less of a hurdle for them. But have you tried setting math in something else than LaTeX? LaTeX is still the gold standard for math formulas. Or consider lecture slides. Professors often want to develop their slides over one or two decades. Just imagine using PowerPoint to manage a few thousand slides (one course over a semester). And imagine keeping that file in a workable state over a decade in PowerPoint. Good luck. Whereas it is no problem to do that with LaTeX and git.

staunton 3y ago
I fully agree that churning out some LaTeX PDFs isn't that cumbersome compared to doing a website, for example. When you already have a workflow for PDFs, which you can pass down generations of students, doing more is work. However, I'm surprised readers don't strongly favor other formats. Doing a more modern website enables a lot of things that PDFs cannot do. Animations, interactivity, better automatic parsing, metadata generation, tracking of changes and versions, easier embedding elsewhere, better referencing and citing (hyperlinks), even automatically verifiable, etc. In a PDF, even marking and copying text often doesn't work properly. Maybe people who write papers mostly don't (have to) care about presentation of the content? Then again, "quality of figures identifies 90% of any paper's merit" because people don't read the text. This is what confuses me. Why don't readers strongly prefer non-PDF publications, of if they do, why don't they get what they want? Mind you, I strongly expect PDFs to become old-fashioned and eventually obsolete for publishing research anyway.
- SiempreViernes 3y ago
  Because most contents you find on the web is of even worse quality than what you find in pdf's (provided you read on a big screen).
- auggierose 3y ago
  I agree that the potential of a modern website is bigger than that of a PDF. The problem is that the effort to get there is much much MUCH bigger than with a PDF. A PDF has the advantage that it gives the reader a high quality product, consistently. I love reading PDFs on a large iPad. As a reader, these are my highest priorities: * high quality (proper layout & design, high resolution of graphics and text) * easy to store in my library, so I can read it again whenever I want to PDF does that. A modern website acceptable to me needs to do that at least as well as PDF does. And they usually don't. For example, how would I store that website easily in my library, being sure that it doesn't depend on some weird JS library downloaded from an obsolete Cloudflare link? The ePub standard is supposed to deliver that, but it falls short in practice. Whenever there is both an ePub version of something, and a PDF version, I choose the PDF version, because it is just easier and more pleasant to read. An exception are books consisting of purely text like novels, which is where I prefer ePubs.
- funcDropShadow 3y ago
  > Doing a more modern website enables a lot of things that PDFs cannot do. Animations, interactivity, better automatic parsing, metadata generation, tracking of changes and versions, easier embedding elsewhere, better referencing and citing (hyperlinks), Perhaps you are not aware that you can create interactive and animated PDFs with LaTeX, beamer, and tikz. Admittedly, it is rarely used. But links inside and outside of a PDF, including additional files, like source code and measured data into the PDF, generating versions of PDFs that show the diff compared to another commit in a version control system, slides that reveal themselves piece by piece are not only possible but actively used in academic circles. Just have look at the PDF of this HN thread for some of those features. Copying parts of a PDF is usually not a problem if it was generated with LaTeX but is often a problem with other generators. > "quality of figures identifies 90% of any paper's merit" Again, see the PDF of this HN thread for nicely formated, syntax highlighted copyable figures, e.g. Fig 2. Do that in a web stack. Of course it is possible, but the best way to do it changes probably quite often and needs a dozen NPM libraries with aforementioned maintenance burden. PDF are offline capable. I can have a directory on my machines or a cloud service of my choosing as a kind of private library. Do that with web pages. It is possible but often more pita than it is worth. I can use local tools for full text search in them. And I will be able to use that when sitting in an airplane or in the middle of a forest. I.e. I can choose where I want to read and consume complicated reads to facilitate my understanding not to optimize wifi coverage. I've had a colleague at university who wrote a multi-hundred page book with around 600 diagrams, all of them where programmed with tikz in LaTeX, you could change centrally the building blocks, colors, line styles, shading, font sizes etc. And all of the diagrams would adapt automatically. While being able to integrate these diagrams with arrows to source code and mathematical formulas. I am not aware of any other tool that can do that reliably. That is an extreme use case and for many simpler use cases LaTeX/PDF is not worth it.

staunton 3y ago

I fully agree that churning out some LaTeX PDFs isn't that cumbersome compared to doing a website, for example. When you already have a workflow for PDFs, which you can pass down generations of students, doing more is work. However, I'm surprised readers don't strongly favor other formats. Doing a more modern website enables a lot of things that PDFs cannot do. Animations, interactivity, better automatic parsing, metadata generation, tracking of changes and versions, easier embedding elsewhere, better referencing and citing (hyperlinks), even automatically verifiable, etc. In a PDF, even marking and copying text often doesn't work properly. Maybe people who write papers mostly don't (have to) care about presentation of the content? Then again, "quality of figures identifies 90% of any paper's merit" because people don't read the text. This is what confuses me. Why don't readers strongly prefer non-PDF publications, of if they do, why don't they get what they want? Mind you, I strongly expect PDFs to become old-fashioned and eventually obsolete for publishing research anyway.

SiempreViernes 3y ago
Because most contents you find on the web is of even worse quality than what you find in pdf's (provided you read on a big screen).
auggierose 3y ago
I agree that the potential of a modern website is bigger than that of a PDF. The problem is that the effort to get there is much much MUCH bigger than with a PDF. A PDF has the advantage that it gives the reader a high quality product, consistently. I love reading PDFs on a large iPad. As a reader, these are my highest priorities: * high quality (proper layout & design, high resolution of graphics and text) * easy to store in my library, so I can read it again whenever I want to PDF does that. A modern website acceptable to me needs to do that at least as well as PDF does. And they usually don't. For example, how would I store that website easily in my library, being sure that it doesn't depend on some weird JS library downloaded from an obsolete Cloudflare link? The ePub standard is supposed to deliver that, but it falls short in practice. Whenever there is both an ePub version of something, and a PDF version, I choose the PDF version, because it is just easier and more pleasant to read. An exception are books consisting of purely text like novels, which is where I prefer ePubs.
funcDropShadow 3y ago
> Doing a more modern website enables a lot of things that PDFs cannot do. Animations, interactivity, better automatic parsing, metadata generation, tracking of changes and versions, easier embedding elsewhere, better referencing and citing (hyperlinks), Perhaps you are not aware that you can create interactive and animated PDFs with LaTeX, beamer, and tikz. Admittedly, it is rarely used. But links inside and outside of a PDF, including additional files, like source code and measured data into the PDF, generating versions of PDFs that show the diff compared to another commit in a version control system, slides that reveal themselves piece by piece are not only possible but actively used in academic circles. Just have look at the PDF of this HN thread for some of those features. Copying parts of a PDF is usually not a problem if it was generated with LaTeX but is often a problem with other generators. > "quality of figures identifies 90% of any paper's merit" Again, see the PDF of this HN thread for nicely formated, syntax highlighted copyable figures, e.g. Fig 2. Do that in a web stack. Of course it is possible, but the best way to do it changes probably quite often and needs a dozen NPM libraries with aforementioned maintenance burden. PDF are offline capable. I can have a directory on my machines or a cloud service of my choosing as a kind of private library. Do that with web pages. It is possible but often more pita than it is worth. I can use local tools for full text search in them. And I will be able to use that when sitting in an airplane or in the middle of a forest. I.e. I can choose where I want to read and consume complicated reads to facilitate my understanding not to optimize wifi coverage. I've had a colleague at university who wrote a multi-hundred page book with around 600 diagrams, all of them where programmed with tikz in LaTeX, you could change centrally the building blocks, colors, line styles, shading, font sizes etc. And all of the diagrams would adapt automatically. While being able to integrate these diagrams with arrows to source code and mathematical formulas. I am not aware of any other tool that can do that reliably. That is an extreme use case and for many simpler use cases LaTeX/PDF is not worth it.