On 10/06/2014 11:00 AM, Phillip Lord wrote:
"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <[email protected]> writes:
On 10/06/2014 09:32 AM, Phillip Lord wrote:
"Peter F. Patel-Schneider" <[email protected]> writes:
Who cares what the authors intend? I mean, they are not reading the
paper, are they?
For reviewing, what the authors intend is extremely important. Having
different rendering of the paper interfere with the authors' message is
something that should be avoided at all costs.
Really? So, for example, you think that a reviewer with impared vision
should, for example, be forced to review a paper using the authors
rendering, regardless of whether they can read it or not?
No, but this is not what I was talking about. I was talking about
interfering with the authors' message via changes from the rendering
that the authors' set up.
It *is* exactly what you are talking about. If I want to render your
document to speech, then why should I not? What I am saying is that,
you, the author, should not wish to constrain the rendering, only really
the content. Effectively, if you are using latex, you are already doing
this, since latex defines the layout and not you.
But, I think we are talking in too abstract a term here. Should you be
able to constrain indentation for code blocks? Yes, of course, you
should. But, a quick look at the web shows that people do this all the
time.
Sure, and htlatex appears to interfere with this indentation. At least it does
in my ISWC paper.
Similarly for reading papers, if the rendering of the paper interferes
with the authors' message, that is a failure of the process.
Yes, I agree. Which is why, I believe, that the rendering of a paper
should be up to the reader
As this is why I believe that the authors' should be able to specify the
rendering of their paper to the extent that they feel is needed to convey the
intent of the paper.
For scientific papers, I think this really is not very far. I mean, a
scientific paper is not a fashion store; it's a story designed to
persuade with data.
I would like to see papers which are in the hands of the reader as much
as possible. Citation format should be for the reader. Math
presentation. Graphs should be interactive and zoomable, with the data
underneath as CSV.
All of these are possible and routine with HTML now. I want to be free
to choose the organisation of my papers so that I can convey what I
want. At the moment, I cannot. The PDF is not reasonable for all, maybe
not even most of this. But some.
Phil
So, you believe that there is an excellent set of tools for preparing,
reviewing, and reading scientific publishing.
Package them up and make them widely available. If they are good, people will
use them.
Convince those who run conferences. If these people are convinced, then they
will allow their use in conferences or maybe even require their use.
I'm not convinced by what I'm seeing right now, however.
peter
