"Code Sandwiches"

[Lars T. Kyllingstad]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2011 02:15:01 -0500, Nick Sabalausky wrote:

> PDF: *Complete* inability to adapt appropriately to the viewing device,
> *completely* useless page breaks and associated top/bottom page margins
> in places that have absolutely *no* use for them, no flowing layout,
> frequent horizontal scrolling, poor (if any) linking, inability for the
> reader to choose the fonts/etc that *they* find readable. Oh, and ever
> tried reading one of those pdf's that use a multi-column layout? All of
> this together makes PDF the #1 worst document format for viewing on a
> PC. All for what? Increased accuracy the *few* times it ever gets
> printed? Outside of print-shops, pdf needs to die a horrible death.

I completely disagree.  But then again, you would probably label me as 
one of the "ivory tower academic authors". ;)

PDF ensures a consistent look across different platforms and viewers, 
because the layout is fixed and fonts can be embedded.  This is 
especially important when the document contains formulas.

Embedding formulas as images isn't really an option, because you want 
them to be in the same font as (or a font that looks good with) the 
document's main font.  This is generally not possible with HTML, because 
you never know which fonts are installed on the target computer.  (Yes, 
there's the @font-face CSS thingy, but AFAIK it's rarely used due to font 
licensing issues.)

As I see it, the only viable option for embedding math in HTML is to use 
MathML.  Unfortunately, that's generally not supported in any of the 
current web browsers, though most of them will support it in their 
upcoming releases (IE being the exception, I think).  It remains to be 
seen how good the MathML rendering engines turn out to be.  (You think 
badly rendered text is hard to read?  Badly rendered formulas are *much* 
worse.)

Anyway, besides ensuring good-looking formulas, a fixed layout means that 
you are in full control over other typesetting issues such as 
hyphenation.  Yes, you can do that automatically with JavaScript, but you 
can never be sure of the result.

And finally, I have yet to see any web browser or word processor that 
even comes close to LaTeX with regards to typesetting quality.  Show me a 
PDF file created by LaTeX and a PDF version of a Word document, and I'm 
pretty sure I can tell at a glance which is which.

I don't understand your big gripe with PDF readers either.  Maybe Adobe 
just makes a crappy one?  I use the one that comes with the GNOME 
desktop, Evince, and it works perfectly.  (It's open source, too!)  As we 
speak I have it open on a 1422-page PDF document, and I can scroll 
without any lag, search for text (and math, even), and basically do 
anything I can in a web reader.

-Lars