[eigenket]

HTLM may be the standard for many things, but it is not the standard for academic papers. PDF is the standard.

PDF is the optimal format for this use-case, mostly because of existing tooling which makes it very easy to make academic papers as PDFs. As far as I know no tools exist to make something comparable to an academic paper which would improve view-ability on a small screen.

[BlueTemplar]

What about GNU TeXmacs ?

http://www.texmacs.org/tmweb/home/welcome.en.html

(No direct relation to TeX or GNU Emacs.)

Though sadly this is not sufficient, we also have issues for HTML standardization for standalone documents, unlike, for say, PDF-A.

https://www.russellbeattie.com/notes/posts/the-decades-long-...

[bobbylarrybobby]

Ok then, PDF is a bad standard. HTML can do all the same stuff and more.

[eigenket]

PDF is not a bad standard, the priorities of the people producing scientific papers as pdfs are just not the same as your priorities.