[periheli0n]

> nobody is going to read a complex technical paper in practise on a phone

I do, in fact. Or rather, I often would like to but with PDF? No chance. IEEE explore online reading sometimes works, but it would work better if they cleaned up their UI to be compatible with phones.

I have read thousands of pages of fiction on a phone and quite enjoyed it. Phones are great for reading if the content reflows properly.

Now publishers and content creators would need to embrace non-paginated, reflowing output. This would not only facilitate reading on phones, but also on tablets and laptop screens.

O‘Reilly‘s online platform does a good job with their app.

There is zero reason why paginated output should be the default in 2022.

[oplaadpunt]

Yes, fiction works because the layout is simple, consisting of text, and maybe images?

Research papers are far more complex, and have established standards that aid quick reading and parsing. I absolutely don't want to deal with reflowing equations, reflowing figures, or whatever when publishing papers. Precise margins and column widths.

[periheli0n]

Yet, by far the vast majority of content produced today, technical or prose, is read on screens.

Responsive webdesign has been around for quite a while. I don’t see a reason, other than lack of effort/investment, why we shouldn’t be able to read technical papers on variable-width screens, in a non-paginated form.

Dealing with the technical challenges should not be the task of the author, but the publisher. And indeed, most publishers are on it.

What‘s missing is a standardised format that can be downloaded, annotated, re-shared like a PDF.

[bccdee]

I wish there were a convention for sharing whole websites. Even a zip file containing an index.html plus images, css, other pages, etc. would be fine if browsers just supported it.

[warkdarrior]

The SingleFile browser extension can export a webpage into one HTML with all images, fonts, etc that are needed embedded in the HTML.

[bccdee]

Yeah but that works through base64 data urls, which are clumsy. Epubs are zips of separate resources and that works great. We should have an equivalent for webpages and other similar documents—a digital-first competitor to pdfs. Or maybe just broader compatibility for epubs, such as first-class browser support.

[gildas]

You might prefer SingleFileZ, see https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFileZ

[auggierose]

O'Reilly doesn't publish math books. All math books in epub/mobi format look like garbage. There isn't a single exception. If you know of one, please tell me. It seems currently too hard to get layout, resolution and inline formulas right in a portable format.

[goosedragons]

With MathML epubs can look decent. For example take a look at the sample MathML epub "A First Course In Linear Algebra" [0] (in a reader that supports MathML of course). It looks pretty good. The problem is Amazon STILL doesn't support MathML, so publishers just churn out a gross version where all the equations are images and so then it doesn't scale properly with the text and the book becomes 300+ MB because of it. And they can't be bothered to make two versions for readers like Kobo that do support MathML.

[0]: https://github.com/IDPF/epub3-samples/releases/download/2017...

[auggierose]

MathML is not good enough. HTML+KaTeX/MathJax would be good enough, but is not properly supported in any epub readers I know of.

[abdullahkhalids]

I tried the book. There are several places where long equations are cut off. Other minor spacing issues here and there.

[periheli0n]

O‘Reilly‘s online offer has not only O‘Reilly books, but ones from other publishers as well. Some of them have equations. However, they are often rendered as images.

IEEE explore does a good job rendering equations on phone screens. Therefore, it is possible.

There is no technical reason why equations couldn’t be rendered on a screen just as well as on a PDF. Sure, canvas size constraints might interfere, but this problem exists in principle also on paginated output. Plus, horizontal scrolling is a thing.

I‘m not saying a phone is the ideal platform to read a paper containing free energy-like math, but it can go a long way. Much longer than with the artificial restriction to paginated output like PDF.

[auggierose]

Of course it is technically possible, but I haven't seen it done properly. I have never seen a book with math rendered as images that was of satisfactory quality or even close to what PDF can offer. I doubt IEEE explore is an exception, but I don't have an account, so cannot check.

I would like to be able to read a book also on a phone, but I am not going to compromise on quality for that, given that I can just read it on a large tablet in PDF format.

[periheli0n]

It is possible to find Open Access articles with math on ieeexplore with little effort. Have a look here: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/6767058

Does this live up to your maths standards?

[auggierose]

Thank you for the example! Yes, that definitely looks good, but is still just a webpage. Also, it has pictures with bad resolution, and a latex table that has been rendered as an image for some strange reason. So as usual, it is not consistent in its quality, which is usually the problem.

To compare, open the accompanying PDF, which is also provided along with the webpage. It is of MUCH higher quality, which is partially due to the fact that layout is static.

Furthermore, the webpage doesn't support pagination. The problem is turning it into a book, and there doesn't seem to be a good standard that supports HTML+KATEX/MATHJAX properly. In theory there is no reason they shouldn't, as epub support javascript, but in practice it just doesn't work properly.

[periheli0n]

> but is still just a web page

> doesn’t support pagination

Isn’t that exactly the point? Please, no pagination on a screen. A web page will do just fine. In fact, that was what the www was conceived for: publishing science.

> open the accompanying PDF, […] of much higher quality.

The only thing that is higher quality in the PDF is the justified alignment and pagination. The figures have the same (poor) resolution.

The bottom line is: * it is perfectly possible to publish technical papers in a format that is accessible on a phone. * non-paginated, free flowing output also works better on larger screens (e.g) I can resize the window and have my note-taking app open next to the paper. * PDFs are still great for annotating and printing, if required.