Re: scientific publishing process (was Re: Cost and access)

On 10/06/2014 04:15 AM, Phillip Lord wrote:
> "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfpschneider@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> One problem with allowing HTML submission is ensuring that reviewers can
>> correctly view the submission as the authors intended it to be viewed.  How
>> would you feel if your paper was rejected because one of the reviewers could
>> not view portions of it?  At least with PDF there is a reasonably good chance
>> that every paper can be correctly viewed by all its reviewers, even if they
>> have to print it out.  I don't think that the same claim can be made for
>> HTML-based systems.
>
>
> I don't think this is a valid point. It is certainly possible to write
> HTML that will not be look good on every machine, but these days, it is
> easier to write HTML that does.
>
> The same is true with PDF. Font problems used to be routine. And, as
> other people have said, it's very hard to write a PDF that looks good on
> anything other than paper.

My aesthetics are different.  I routinely view PDFs on my laptop, and find 
that they indeed look great.  As I said before, I prefer PDF to HTML for 
viewing of just about any technical material on my computers.  Yes, on limited 
displays two-column PDF may not be viewable at all.  Single-column PDF should 
look good on displays with resolution of HD or better.

When I view HTML documents, even the ones I have written, I have to do a lot 
of adjusting to get something that looks even half-decent on the screen.  And 
when I print HTML documents, the result is invariably bad, and often very bad.

However, my point was not about looking good.  It was about being able to see 
the paper in the way that the author intended.  My experience is that this is 
generally possible with PDF, but generally not possible with HTML.  I do write 
papers with considerable math in them, so my experience may not be typical, 
but whenever I have tried to produce HTML versions of my papers, I have ended 
up quite frustrated because even I cannot get them to display the way I want 
them to.

It may be that there are now good tools for producing HTML that carries the 
intent of the author.  htlatex has been mentioned in this thread.  A solution 
that uses htlatex would have the benefit of building on much of the work that 
has been done to make latex a reasonable technology for producing papers.  If 
someone wants to create the necessary infrastructure to make htlatex work as 
well as pdflatex does, then feel free.


>> Further, why should there be any technical preference for HTML at all?  (Yes,
>> HTML is an open standard and PDF is a closed one, but is there anything else
>> besides that?)  Web conference vitally use the web in their reviewing and
>> publishing processes.  Doesn't that show their allegiance to the web?  Would
>> the use of HTML make a conference more webby?
>
> PDF is, I think, open these days. But, yes, I do think that conferences
> should dog food. I mean, what would you think if W3C produced all of
> their documents in PDF? Would that make sense?

Actually, I would have been very happy if W3C had produced all its technical 
documents in PDF.  It would have made my life much easier.

> Phil


peter

Received on Monday, 6 October 2014 14:34:03 UTC