Re: Newsletter & Call for Papers WebSci'18

On 02/25/2018 01:06 PM, Ruben Verborgh wrote:

> Hi Peter,
>
>> Someone then needs to put together a description of how all it works, and
>> build a checker that an HTML5 document meets the requirements of some
>> particular publishing format
> We are definitely in agreement here.
>
>> and show that these self-contained documents
>> render correctly on different platforms, even platforms with limited
>> resources, and also render correctly when printed
> As you know, this is not the case for all PDFs either,
> but compliance checkers can indeed be very helpful there.
>
> (It's a real-world problem BTW:
> had an issue thie weekend printing PDFs I was reviewing for ESWC.)
>
>> And there has to be some assurance that this will continue
>> to be the case.
> I don't think that will be a problem,
> given that HTML documents from the 1990s still render fine on my browser,
> and that I can render scholarly HTML of today on Lynx.

My experience is very much to the contrary.   There are many current HTML
documents that do not render correctly on my browser.  Of course, I have my
browser set on "maximum paranoia", with ads and javascript turned off.   You
may also remember the browser wars, where different browsers had different
extensions to HTML.   IE6 was a prime offender.  There even sites describing
how different browsers differentially render HTML.

Now maybe HTM5 has fixed this problem, but I am quite skeptical.   A
large-scale demonstration of compatibility is needed at the minimum.

>
>> But that's not sufficient for HTML5 to be selected as the distribution
>> mechanism any time soon.
> Not disagreeing on that either;
> my only point was that the Web stack technically supports
> all of the benefits you listed for PDF.

Maybe, but all this needs to be shown, and to a skeptical audience.  Until
that happens, there is no reason to even agitate for the use of HTML as a
publishing format.
>
>> There also needs to be a way to turn the output of
>> current popular content creation systems, particularly those using LaTeX and
>> Word, into HTML5.  Alternatively, these systems need to be supplanted in use
>> by new systems.
> Definitely agree.
>
> Best,
>
> Ruben
Right, so another thing that needs to be done before HTML5 can conceivably
used for scholarly conferences and journals.

So who is going to bell these cats?  It isn't going to be me - I find PDF
acceptable.

peter

Received on Monday, 26 February 2018 17:02:47 UTC