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Comment by fiatjaf | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I'm done with this "scientific" tone, this PDF thing and so on. What is in this paper that couldn't be posted as HTML in a web page? How is PDF better compared to that?

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Are you trolling? It's a scientific paper.

He's right about those generally not actually needing PDF for non-print purposes though - simple text and a few images is way more web-friendly as HTML. Sadly only very few repositories make HTML versions available as well.

What makes it "scientific"? The fact that it is a PDF and the impersonal tone?

It was peer-reviewed and published in a journal.

You are probably thinking of the advertising whitepapers of scammy alt-coins and crypto-tokens. This is actually research.

Are you trolling? HTML was invented for scientific papers.

Try reading the HTML version of Fielding's paper and tell me it looks better than the pdf. It might have been invented for that purpose, but that doesn't mean it's still suitable for it. When you are writing a paper, you want to control the presentation, not just the content.

I'm pretty sure you have way more control over "presentation" when you use HTML vs PDF.

No you don't, HTML has massive variation between devices and what software is used to display it. Try setting your screen resolution to 640x480 and opening a webpage or, even worse, modifying DPI. PDFs on the other hand specify exactly where to place each glyph (admittedly there is still variation between software but it's much more consistent).

You sure do - the variation between devices is the manifestation of the ability to control layout depending on the recipient's display's resolution and size.

If anything, a PDF designed for A4/letter is going to be cumbersome to read on a (probably rather small) 640x480 display.

The sad state of PDF rendering on (most) e-book readers should be evidence enough.

More control over how it looks at the users' end with HTML than I do with Latex? Yeah, I don't think so. Why would everyone be using JS if you could do whatever you needed in HTML?

The project was inspired by the paper. Which is in fact a real bonafide scientific paper.

The kind of publication that has a distribution model based around print. Something that has usually been best served by PDF rather than html.

Do papers submitted to electronic-only repositories like ePrint really still have a "distribution model based around print"? They might have if they are submitted to traditional journals as well, and having a PDF version as well is desirable for various purposes, but IMHO it's not so clear cut.

This one is not an ICO-Whitepaper. But I get where you are coming from here.

I don't know why you're getting downvoted. I've always wondered the same. Why do these bitcoin people always do this "white paper" thing as PDF? Is it because it's trendy?

Investors are told to always read the white paper (RTFWP?) so if you don't have one you must be a scam, right?

i prefer PDFs because they are easier to store offline and easier to move around.

They also depend less on browser quirks. Except in very extreme cases, PDFs look the same and work just as well (aside from form-filling, unfortunately) regardless of which viewer you're using.

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