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by SebastianKra 406 days ago
That seems contradictory, when Latex is rather famously imprecise at placing figures and such. Weren't both languages (at least at some point) intended to take layouting control away from the writer?

But regardless, I think that, in addition to moving away from Latex we should also reconsider the primary output format. Documents are rarely printed anymore, and inaccessible, fixed-size A4 pdfs are annoying to read on anything but an iPad Pro.
2 comments
wtallis 405 days ago
LaTeX isn't intended to take layout control away from the author so much as it is intended to automatically produce a good-enough layout allowing a single author to produce a very large document without employing a designer.

HTML by contrast explicitly does remove control over layout from the author and place it in the hands of the user (and their chosen user agent).

Both languages have mechanisms to (somewhat) separate the content from the formatting rules.

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meinersbur 405 days ago
Both claims are incorrect.

LaTeX would rather produce a bad document if it cannot produce a good one. Example: overfull hbox. A designer is still required who creates the documentclass, it is just that LaTeX comes with some predefined ones intended for scientific publishing.

HTML+CSS require pixel-perfect rendering. Example: ACID2 test. While it might have been the idea of plain HTML at some point (<em> instead of <i>), control has never been taken away from the author thanks to CSS.

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wtallis 404 days ago
You're badly mischaracterizing tests like ACID2. The test definition includes a long list of things that invalidate the test, including things like changing the zoom level. So it's wrong to construe that test as requiring pixel-perfect rendering when it explicitly doesn't cover exactly the kind of user agent controls I'm talking about.

Your comments about LaTeX do not seem to contradict anything I said.

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dgfl 405 days ago
Well, maybe they’re not printed by yourself. But many academics, often young people included, still print papers.
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SebastianKra 405 days ago
Which they can still do. Printed HTML is perfectly serviceable (definitely better than non-printed PDF).

Or are you arguing that there are somehow more people reading printed papers than digital?

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