More accessible papers
Most research papers have the same layout: two columns per A4 page. They mostly come as PDF or PS. Although this is standard, it is not really accessible for people with people with bad vision, who prefer larger fonts. When you print this, the fonts are rather small. For those people, a reflowable PDF would make much more sense, so they can choose how big the fonts are on screen & paper. Also, some of the new epaper devices, such as the Sony Reader or IRex, don't really support the format of these research papers (they become unreadable). Do any of you have ideas how to convert a two column per page PDF/PS to a single larger column per page, and maybe even reflowable PDF? Thanks, Peter
Hi Peter,
Although this is standard, it is not really accessible for people with people with bad vision, who prefer larger fonts. When you print this, the fonts are rather small. For those people, a reflowable PDF would make much more sense, so they can choose how big the fonts are on screen & paper.
It is the standard for ACM workshops and conferences, which includes ICFP and Haskell Workshop. All these PDF's are produced from a standard Latex class file. If you wrote to people expressing this, and did whatever magic is required to make the class file produce both the current format and a reflowable PDF, you might get somewhere.
Do any of you have ideas how to convert a two column per page PDF/PS to a single larger column per page, and maybe even reflowable PDF?
For all my papers I have the original source .tex files. If you know how to convert them into reflowable PDF's (or any other format that is suitable for people with disabilities) I'm happy to hand them over. I suspect you'll have more luck going from the original .tex rather than the PDF. Thanks Neil
At Mon, 19 Nov 2007 19:57:14 +0000, Neil Mitchell wrote:
All these PDF's are produced from a standard Latex class file. For all my papers I have the original source .tex files. I suspect you'll have more luck going from the original .tex rather than the PDF.
I would be especially neat if there was some way to embed the .tex source in the .pdf, so that you could later extract the source from the .pdf and rebuild it. This is probably not officially supported by .pdf, but I bet it can be done. Perhaps by creating a hidden section and a bit of javascript. Ideally you would just add: \usepackage{embedsource} into your .tex and it would automatically do it for you. j.
Jeremy Shaw wrote:
I would be especially neat if there was some way to embed the .tex source in the .pdf, so that you could later extract the source from the .pdf and rebuild it. This is probably not officially supported by .pdf, but I bet it can be done. Perhaps by creating a hidden section and a bit of javascript. Ideally you would just add:
\usepackage{embedsource}
into your .tex and it would automatically do it for you.
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no? Peter
Hi Peter,
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no?
Building a .tex file can be rather hard with packages and what-not, plus quite a few of us use lhst2tex as a preprocessor. It's not impossible, but its not trivial either, and I can't imagine that anyone would use a .tex over a PDF. If there is a much better format than PDF as generated by the standard class files, it should be the authors creating it, not other people post-processing the tex. Thanks Neil
You are completely right, 99% of the people will read the PDF, in exactly the same sense that Windows users prefer to download an installable EXE instead of building from source. But nobody here will argue that the *option* to build from source is useful no? So I don't see why this would not apply to compiling tex files into PDF. But I don't know anything about tex, so I can't really say. I'm using Microsoft Word, shame on me! Yes, I really should learn LaTeX though, because writing a lot of math equations in Word is tiresome...
Hi Peter,
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no?
Building a .tex file can be rather hard with packages and what-not, plus quite a few of us use lhst2tex as a preprocessor. It's not impossible, but its not trivial either, and I can't imagine that anyone would use a .tex over a PDF.
If there is a much better format than PDF as generated by the standard class files, it should be the authors creating it, not other people post-processing the tex.
Thanks
Neil
also, Latex source code is 100% accessible to screen reader users. Paul
You are completely right, 99% of the people will read the PDF, in exactly the same sense that Windows users prefer to download an installable EXE instead of building from source.
But nobody here will argue that the *option* to build from source is useful no? So I don't see why this would not apply to compiling tex files into PDF. But I don't know anything about tex, so I can't really say. I'm using Microsoft Word, shame on me! Yes, I really should learn LaTeX though, because writing a lot of math equations in Word is tiresome...
Hi Peter,
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no?
Building a .tex file can be rather hard with packages and what-not, plus quite a few of us use lhst2tex as a preprocessor. It's not impossible, but its not trivial either, and I can't imagine that anyone would use a .tex over a PDF.
If there is a much better format than PDF as generated by the standard class files, it should be the authors creating it, not other people post-processing the tex.
Thanks
Neil
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Peter Verswyvelen
Jeremy Shaw wrote:
I would be especially neat if there was some way to embed the .tex source in the .pdf, [...]
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no?
I believe it is normal that the publisher requires you to give away your copyright for them to publish your article. You then no longer own the .pdf or the .tex file. For example, the Springer copyright form[1] for their Lecture Notes in Computer Science says: [...] The copyright transfer covers the sole right to print, publish, distribute and sell throughout the world the said Contribution and parts thereof, including all revisions or versions and future editions thereof and in any medium, such as in its electronic form (offline, online), [...] They do allow you to keep a copy of the .pdf file on your own website for archiving purposes, but republishing the article with a single column doesn't seem to be allowed. [1]: The copyright form can be downloaded here: http://www.springer.com/east/home/computer/lncs?SGWID=5-164-7-72376-0 -- Martin Geisler Do your secure multi-party computations (SMPC) with VIFF, the Virtual Ideal Functionality Framework. Download at http://viff.dk/
On Wed, 21 Nov 2007, Peter Verswyvelen
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no?
Typically researchers have to give away the copyright to their papers upon publication. However, sometimes the authors retain some rights. You could check the ACM copyright policy (for instance) and see what it says: http://www.acm.org/pubs/copyright_policy/ -- /NAD
At Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:10:38 +0100, Peter Verswyvelen wrote:
Yes, but why don't researchers just publish their TEX file? You can regard that as the "source code" for generating PDF/PS whatever no?
Yes. but things have a way of getting lost. The primary advantage to embedding the data is you won't end up with the just .pdf and no way to reproduce it. As Neil points out, it is also only useful if the embedded data is includes all the information needed to recreate the final .pdf -- which could make things trickier -- and greatly increase the size of the .pdf. Oh well. j.
Why don't you typeset the whole thing in Latex. That way you'll definitely ensure accessibility. Cheers Paul At 19:43 19/11/2007, you wrote:
Most research papers have the same layout: two columns per A4 page. They mostly come as PDF or PS.
Although this is standard, it is not really accessible for people with people with bad vision, who prefer larger fonts. When you print this, the fonts are rather small. For those people, a reflowable PDF would make much more sense, so they can choose how big the fonts are on screen & paper.
Also, some of the new epaper devices, such as the Sony Reader or IRex, don't really support the format of these research papers (they become unreadable).
Do any of you have ideas how to convert a two column per page PDF/PS to a single larger column per page, and maybe even reflowable PDF?
Thanks, Peter
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Peter Verswyvelen
Most research papers have the same layout: two columns per A4 page. They mostly come as PDF or PS.
I think it is (more and more) common these days for journals to publish an HTML version on their web site. Otherwise I'd suggest e-mailing the author and asking for a single-column version (or whatever you need), or at least LaTeX sources or other editable version. -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants
participants (7)
-
Jeremy Shaw -
Ketil Malde -
Martin Geisler -
Neil Mitchell -
Nils Anders Danielsson -
Peter Verswyvelen -
PR Stanley