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

On 10/06/2014 08:29 AM, Phillip Lord wrote:
> "Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <pfpschneider@gmail.com> writes:
>> However, my point was not about looking good.  It was about being able to see
>> the paper in the way that the author intended.
>
> Yes, I understand this. It's not something that I consider at all
> important, which perhaps represents our different view points. Readers
> have different preferences. I prefer reading in inverse video; I like to
> be able to change font size to zoom in and out. I quite like fixed width
> fonts. Other people like the two column thing. Other people want things
> read to them.
>
> Who cares what the authors intend? I mean, they are not reading the
> paper, are they?

For reviewing, what the authors intend is extremely important.  Having 
different rendering of the paper interfere with the authors' message is 
something that should be avoided at all costs.  Similarly for reading papers, 
if the rendering of the paper interferes with the authors' message, that is a 
failure of the process.

>> 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.
>
> I've been using mathjax on my website for a long time and it seems to
> work well, although I am not maths heavy.
>
>
>> 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.
>
> It's more to make htlatex work as well as lncs.sty works. htlatex
> produces reasonable, if dull, HTML of the bat.

My experience is that htlatex produces very bad output.

> Phil

peter

Received on Monday, 6 October 2014 16:10:32 UTC