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Accessible open textbooks in math-heavy disciplines

(richardzach.org)
235 points volemo | 1 comments | 29 Mar 25 16:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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oh_my_goodness ◴[29 Mar 25 18:14 UTC] No.43517392[source]▶
Uh ... where is it written that LaTeX can only provide pdf output?

Turn that around. Thought experiment. Say we work like pigdogs for 5 years and we completely replace all of Latex except the part that produces pdf. What value have we provided to users at that point?

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xworld21 ◴[29 Mar 25 19:51 UTC] No.43518141[source]▶
The article talks about converting LaTeX to HTML, which is feasible today, if only buggy and fragile. This is the textbook the author talks about, which is written in LaTeX (but compiled with LaTeXML instead of pdflatex): https://forallx.openlogicproject.org/html/
replies(1): >>43519590 #
oh_my_goodness ◴[29 Mar 25 23:10 UTC] No.43519590[source]▶
It does. But why can't LaTex produce png or something? Why does it have to be either pdf or pretty much abandon the idea of typesetting? Or am I misunderstanding?
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goosedragons ◴[30 Mar 25 00:22 UTC] No.43519963[source]▶
You can. Compile to DVI then use dvipng. There's not much reason to do it anymore. PDFs take up less space, you can copy the text, do hyperlinks.
replies(2): >>43520372 #>>43522782 #
oh_my_goodness ◴[30 Mar 25 01:26 UTC] No.43520372[source]▶
So what's so bad about pdfs?
replies(2): >>43520698 #>>43522830 #
1. CJefferson ◴[30 Mar 25 02:26 UTC] No.43520698[source]▶
Some people like text which they can reformat easily (increase font size, change to different screens dimensions).

What is generally bad about the PDFs that Latex produces (and is a problem with latex, not a problem with PDF) is that they are very inaccessible, they don't work with screen readers.

The reason it's so hard to make latex output HTML (although people are working on it) is that latex is actually a programming language, which is executed to decide where things go on in the PDF.

Make latex output HTML is a bit like trying to take (say) a game engine like Unity, and change it's rendering engine to output HTML instead of graphics -- in the worst case it's basically impossible, as the game just generates commands like "draw triangle here", without context or semantics.