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You mention printing. This is the singular reason why I prefer pdfs myself. PDFs are viewable in the browser and resizeable. They are operating system agnostic.

You mention printing. This is the singular reason why I prefer pdfs myself. PDFs are viewable in the browser and resizeable. They are operating system agnostic. Most importantly, they preserve the formatting that the original author intended. This is not to say it can't be all done natively in a browser, with resizing based on screen or print resolution. Just that most paper authors will not be savvy enough to do it right. It's enough for them to learn LaTeX properly (the only option for typesetting equations) and I doubt tooling for doing what you suggest will come any time soon.

ssivark 13y ago
> PDFs are viewable in the browser and resizeable. They are operating system agnostic. Most importantly, they preserve the formatting that the original author intended. So are most webpages. > Just that most paper authors will not be savvy enough to do it right. [...] I believe this can be done gracefully in a manner where the authors just supply a source file and the software chain will generate the requisite output formats (much like pdflatex or Pandoc do the job today). Scientists should NOT have to muck around with HTML/CSS/JS/etc else the solution would be DOA.
- banachtarski 13y ago
  > So are most webpages View hacker news on multiple browsers and operating systems. It won't look the same. My gmail looks different too. Fonts are different which means the numbers of words per line are different. > I believe this can be done gracefully in a manner where the authors just supply a source file and the software chain will generate the requisite output formats (much like pdflatex or Pandoc do the job today). Scientists should NOT have to muck around with HTML/CSS/JS/etc else the solution would be DOA. Agreed but this is much much easier said than done.
lobster_johnson 13y ago
PDFs are resizable, but still terrible for viewing on a computer screen, which uses a landscape orientation, whereas papers are printed in portrait orientation. (Sure, some monitors can be rotated, but most can't. A tablet can show stuff in portrait, but not at readable font sizes.)

ssivark 13y ago

> PDFs are viewable in the browser and resizeable. They are operating system agnostic. Most importantly, they preserve the formatting that the original author intended. So are most webpages. > Just that most paper authors will not be savvy enough to do it right. [...] I believe this can be done gracefully in a manner where the authors just supply a source file and the software chain will generate the requisite output formats (much like pdflatex or Pandoc do the job today). Scientists should NOT have to muck around with HTML/CSS/JS/etc else the solution would be DOA.

banachtarski 13y ago
> So are most webpages View hacker news on multiple browsers and operating systems. It won't look the same. My gmail looks different too. Fonts are different which means the numbers of words per line are different. > I believe this can be done gracefully in a manner where the authors just supply a source file and the software chain will generate the requisite output formats (much like pdflatex or Pandoc do the job today). Scientists should NOT have to muck around with HTML/CSS/JS/etc else the solution would be DOA. Agreed but this is much much easier said than done.

lobster_johnson 13y ago

PDFs are resizable, but still terrible for viewing on a computer screen, which uses a landscape orientation, whereas papers are printed in portrait orientation. (Sure, some monitors can be rotated, but most can't. A tablet can show stuff in portrait, but not at readable font sizes.)