"Code Sandwiches"

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Daniel Gibson" <metalcaedes at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:il90m3$2t70$3 at digitalmars.com...
> Am 09.03.2011 23:38, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
>> "Daniel Gibson" <metalcaedes at gmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:il8t79$2t70$2 at digitalmars.com...
>>> Am 09.03.2011 22:49, schrieb Daniel Gibson:
>>>> Am 09.03.2011 22:33, schrieb Nick Sabalausky:
>>>>> "Nick Sabalausky" <a at a.a> wrote in message
>>>>> news:il8rmg$176i$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But why is it that academic authors have a chronic inability to 
>>>>>> release
>>>>>> any form of text without first cramming it into a goddamn PDF of all
>>>>>> things?
>>>>>
>>>>> It's like how my dad tries to email photos by sticking them into a 
>>>>> Word
>>>>> document first. WTF's the point?
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> No it's not.
>>>> At least PDF is a standard format with free and open viewers on about 
>>>> any
>>>> platform.
>>
>> Vaguely free, open and standard. Only in the same sense that swf, doc and
>> docx are free, open and standard. HTML (bad as it may be) still wins 
>> here.
>>
>
> No, PDF is an ISO standard, swf and doc aren't and docx isn't either, 
> because it
> doesn't really conform with the OOXML ISO standard..
>

Yea, well, it's still heavily rooted in Adobe.


> As mentioned before: there are free and open viewers for PDF for (almost?) 
> all
> platforms that work reasonably well.

Reasonably well only as far as viewing pdfs on a pc *ever* works "reasonably 
well".


> Can't say the same about doc(x) or swf..

No argument here. Never been a fan of doc or swf anyway.


> That HTML is rendered almost the same on different browsers is a pretty 
> recent
> development as well...

They're documents. They have no need for perfectly consistent rendering. 
Hell, these are exactly the sorts of things html was *created* for. It was 
*intended* for people to view documents however they want to view them.


> Nevertheless HTML doesn't have as much formatting possibilities as LaTeX,
> especially for formulas, so you'd end up using a lot of images which is 
> suboptimal.

I don't see what's wrong with using images for formulas. As for other types 
of formatting, how much does a document (that isn't pretending to be real 
software or a multimedia "experience") really need?


>>>> the PDFs are
>>>> more or less a by-product of that.
>>>> Also they're usually written with LaTeX (or something similar) and the
>>>> obvious
>>>> (digital) formats to publish stuff written in *TeX are Postscript and
>>>> PDF - I
>>>> guess you agree that PDF is preferable, as it can be searched etc ;)
>>
>> *Some* PDFs can be searched.
>>
>
> Most can, the others are - most probably deliberately - broken.
> You can do the same with HTML if you want, just use images instead of real 
> text..
>

Yea, you can do the same with html, but nobody ever does. OTOH, I've come 
across plenty of pdfs with "text" that isn't really text. But I'll grant 
that's not much of a reason against the content producer choosing pdf, since 
they're fully capable of choosing to make it searchable.


>>
>>>> You can also export *TeX to HTML, but that'll probably fuck up 
>>>> formatting
>>>> and
>>>> formulas. So you'd have to use some LaTeX->HTML converter and clean up
>>>> stuff
>>>> afterwards to make sure the formatting is OK, the formulas are like 
>>>> they
>>>> were
>>>> intended to be (missing a small detail like a ' or an index or whatever
>>>> will
>>>> make a formula unusable) etc..
>>
>> So after 15 years there still isn't a good Latex->HTML converter? Sounds
>> more like the matter is a lack of interest in using anything other than 
>> PDF
>> rather than a lack of a good Latex->HTML converter.
>>
>
> I don't know. I think I don't have to tell someone who still uses Firefox2 
> that
> people don't have the motivation to try new software all the time just 
> because
> it may finally be usable ;)
>

I don't use FF2 because I like it. And I *certainly* don't use it for lack 
of trying all the alternatives. I have a *huge* amount of interest in a 
variant of FF3 or SRWare Iron or even IE that gets rid of all the crap that 
I don't have to deal with in FF2. The problem is, I'm the *only* one that 
has such interest.

>>>
>>> One more thing: Published papers will probably be cited by other papers 
>>> or
>>> theses. With PDF this is easier, you can write "XYZ, page 42, l 13" - 
>>> with
>>> HTML
>>> pages it's not that easy, you could maybe write "in chapter 3 somewhere 
>>> in
>>> the
>>> 5th paragraph" or something like that, but that sucks.
>>> Or worse "on the fourth page in the third paragraph" and once a new CMS 
>>> is
>>> used
>>> that splits pages differently that is completely meaningless..
>>
>> These formal papers are divided into sections and subsections, plus HTML
>> supports links and anchors, and even supports disabled word wrapping if
>> that's really needed, so those are non-issues.
>>
>
> If anchors etc are used.. fine. But you can't take that for granted.

Strawman argument. We're talking about the party that *releases* the 
document choosing pdf, not the party viewing it. The person putting the 
paper out is in *exactly* the position to include anchors. Of course they 
can take that ability for granted.

Additionally, if one of the main reasons they choose pdf is because they 
usually start with latex, why not *at least* release the latex as well as 
the pdf? PDF can't be converted to other formats worth a damn, just because 
of the over-engineered over-permissive nature of the format. But, though I 
may be wrong, I would think latex wouldn't be quite so bad. And if it is, 
maybe they shouldn't even be using it then.