I know it's an HN cliche to talk about the website instead of the content, but I really like the LaTeX look and I want to know how it was done.
It’s not perfect, but I like it. I worked on math textbooks and LaTeX as a side gig in college and it’s very comfortable for me.
Probably off putting to a non nerd audience, but it’s a self indulgent site, so whatever.
A LaTeX static site generator could be cool itself. I markdown so much these days it might be refreshing to revisit my past. One day I’ll Google that, I guess. :)
This is actually an interesting approach, make the website look like a text document but enrich it with web functionalities (videos, interactions). It looks very clean/minimal and distraction-free, excellent to read/learn content like this.
“Adding video, sound, and interactive content transforms PDFs into multidimensional communication tools that increase interest and engagement in your documents.
All multimedia that are H.264 compliant can be played back in Adobe Reader 9 and later. (H.264, also known as MPEG-4 part 10, is a video compression standard that provides high-quality video without substantially increasing file size.) Video files of varying formats and filename extensions can be H.264 compliant.
Media files in other formats can be played back in earlier versions of Adobe Reader. However, users must install the appropriate application (such as QuickTime or Windows Media Player) to play the multimedia.
Another way to add multimedia is by entering a URL that refers to a video file or streaming media. Three types of URLs can be used: RTMP, HTTP, and HTTPS. On HTTP and HTTPS servers, H.264-compliant MOV and MP4 files are supported.“
Except that it's fully justified and the spacing between words is horrendous. Seems that no one can get Knuth & Plass right (at least online); maybe because there's no hyphenation / word breaking.
Probably best to just stick with left justified / ragged right.
I loathe the old school Latex look. I appreciate Latex as a markup language, but the computer modern fonts always drove me nuts.
To each their own though. It's interesting to me that someone else had the opposite reaction.
I can totally see how it would feel sort of comforting though. I hadn't thought about it before but it does remind me of old Springer texts, and I could see how that would feel "homey" or something. This conversation has me kind of "resetting" my perspective on it a bit.
I used uBlock customization to block the font from loading to read the article.
For those on Mozilla Firefox[note], please also give the reader view a try.
Reader view is also available on other browsers such as Safari on the iPhone.
[note] - (if you are not on it, please consider downloading and using it but that is a different conversation)
Also, Computer Modern on the same screen, but rendered by Okular or Evince, when viewing a LaTeX document, is also perfectly legible.
When it is rendered properly, I find it very pretty and legible.