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HTML as an Accessible Format for Papers (2023)

(info.arxiv.org)
262 points el3ctron | 6 comments | 06 Dec 25 14:59 UTC | HN request time: 0.79s | source | bottom
1. ekjhgkejhgk ◴[06 Dec 25 17:45 UTC] No.46175133[source]▶
I wish epub was more common for papers. I have no idea if there's any real difficulties with that, or just not enough demand.
replies(3): >>46175389 #>>46175390 #>>46175791 #
2. pspeter3 ◴[06 Dec 25 18:21 UTC] No.46175389[source]▶
Why epub? Isn’t it just HTML under the hood?
replies(2): >>46175635 #>>46183565 #
3. mmooss ◴[06 Dec 25 18:21 UTC] No.46175390[source]▶
epub is html, under the hood

Is there an epub reader that can format text approximately as usably and beautifully as pdf? What I've seen makes it noticeably harder to read longer texts, though I haven't looked around much.

epub also lacks annotation, or at least annotation that will be readable across platforms and time.

4. ekjhgkejhgk ◴[06 Dec 25 18:50 UTC] No.46175635[source]▶
Because I can open it on my ereader.
5. hombre_fatal ◴[06 Dec 25 19:09 UTC] No.46175791[source]▶
Because what makes epub a format on top of html is just that someone QA'ed it and wrote the html/css with it in mind. Especially considering things like diagrams and tables.

Not really what you want researchers to waste their time doing.

But you can use any of the numerous html->epub packagers yourself.

6. silon42 ◴[07 Dec 25 17:54 UTC] No.46183565[source]▶
I think it should also have JS disabled (I hope!)