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Comment by KGIII | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure I understand. Well, I understand what you're doing but I'm not sure why you'd dislike PDF.

PDF has the great benefit of rendering the same on every system. With very few exceptions, PDF will look exactly the same on every system and will print the same on every system.

HTML doesn't really have that same benefit.

Don't get me wrong, I think your service is a great idea for those who would like HTML formatted results, but I'm not understanding the complaint about PDF.

Could you expand on why you don't like PDF?

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Pdf pages are usually based on A4 size which is 210mm wide. Even at full size the writing is often tiny. Once rendered on a 10cm wide screen (landscape) it's pretty darn hard to read.

Also in general the mobile pdf reading experience sucks.

For example you have to download a file (rather than browse to) on Android and the hunt it down to open it.

The pdf readers I've used easily accidentally scroll you to a random page if you make a mistake in where you touch the screen. Kindles probably the best but then you have to email yourself the pdf which is a hassle.

IMO, Reading two-column papers on an iPhone (through PDF) is a real pain -- IMO the format relies on you using your eyes to jump from bottom left to top right, rather than having to scroll from the very bottom to the very top (diagonally). Same problem even exists for single-column styles -- you need to zoom in so much that you have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically.

The need to scroll doesn't exist on a large screen or on a piece of A4, but on smaller devices like mobile phones or even tablets, it's annoying. Having a responsive page means you can scroll vertically as you read, rather than having to make a big jumps (or constant horizontal scrolls) that can really break the flow.

I wonder if that's a personal thing? Over the past year, I've been trying to join the mobile revolution - sort of. The majority of my browsing is now done on a tablet.

I read quite a few PDFs and don't actually have any complaints. I am not personally seeing any readability issues and don't mind consuming PDFs at all.

That said, I think I now understand your complaint. Thanks! I just don't personally have any trouble with it. I use multiple tablets, of varied sizes, and I've had good experiences with all of the devices. While some PDFs are horribly formatted, I find that the device choice doesn't help that and it's a design choice from the author.

But, again, thanks for helping me understand.

> The majority of my browsing is now done on a tablet.

Reading PDFs on a tablet isn't too bad because of large screen real estate.

Reading PDFs on a small mobile phone requires me to zoom in to make the font big enough for me to read, and then I have to scroll right to read, and left and down to move to a new section of the column.

Try reading a PDF on a smaller device than a tablet. I'm sure you'll be able to see what we mean.

Two column papers are the worst format. They emphasize compact printability in a world where no one buys proceedings.

I consume almost all my media on phone. The problem with pdf is precisely that it renders the same on every screen - this makes most PDFs virtually unusable on the phone as you have to scroll down one column in a page, then up for the second column etc.

Not the OP, but PDF is bad on tablets and horrible on phones.

What size tablets are people talking about? I find the iPad size practically ideal for consuming PDF papers.

I think part of the issue is that PDF isn't responsive to the size of the device. A PDF is not much more than an image from the perspective of layout. I'd love to be able to reflow text from a PDF such that a single column fills my screen edge-to-edge and scrolling allows me to advance through the paper, as opposed to requiring me to reposition the viewport every time I reach the end of a column. I know this isn't the purpose of PDFs, and I love them in different contexts where layout (including typography) does matter to me. But I also really want to be able to easily consume papers in a way that isn't constrained by the PDF layout.

Yes, I want my cake and a pony. Cakepony.

Fwiw, this conversation greatly varies depending on who is doing the reading -- the rather banal fact is that the average 25-year-old student has much different ability to screen-read than the average 60-year-old professor (or a 60-year-old student, for that matter) :)

so no need to search tablet specs for the culprit. PEBCAK :)

The screen of a tablet is large enough to display a PDF. But PDFs are split into pages. That's perfect with paper, where we flip pages. It's very unnatural on screens, especially touchscreens, where we use vertical scrolling to move around.

Then there are minor issues of margins, possibly zooming to make text readable, etc.

That's why PDFs are so bad on mobile. The ideal format is one column text, figures and tables between paragraphs of that column, no page breaks, bidirectional links to notes. That's HTML, I guess.

Yeah fair point, I use an iPad mini. But I have heard similar complaints from older folks (40+) who have full-size iPads. I think much of it stems from dual-column printing, which is just kind of antiquated/annoying on digital.

Yup. I agree. I even find the experience fantastic on the original iPad, as well as a brand new one. I find it just fine on my phone, which isn't nearly as large a screen.

I am guessing it is an individual taste thing. That makes some sense.

> HTML doesn't really have that same benefit.

Yes, it does.

Not really, look at the myriad rendering issues between the most popular browsers. PDF should result in pixel-for-pixel reproducibility, browsers don't do that in practice.

That's why we still test pages in different browsers and end up using browser specific code to ensure proper rendering - which often only reaches the 'close enough' format.

Not sure if pixel-perfect matters for consuming papers.

No way. We're testing in multiple browsers because of Javascript only.

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