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0 pointskkfx3y ago0 comments

IMVHO beside plots/formulae/tables etc who are hard to read if just a bit more than deadly simple cases in code, well written pure text AND an outliner (like org-mode or the old CanonCAT etc, now forgotten tools from a more civilized and dead age) are the best way to focus on what you write instead of it's visual aspects.

Visual is part of the package for advertisement, not for scientific/important stuff production. The best example: those who crappy formatting HTML emails not much to embed an image but to really send "rendered text" thinking that's nice and useful instead of visual useless crap...

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sideshowb3y ago· 1 in thread

> Visual is part of the package for advertisement, not for scientific/important stuff production

That's where my experience differs.

Knowledge is fractal in nature; I can add more details to a paper ad infinitum. Seeing how big the rendered paragraph or section will be is, to me, a crucial hint that it might be time to stop.

Seeing how far away two mutually dependent concepts appear in the finished product (when you a know a reader will likely have to jump back and forth between them) may also influence my writing. If they're getting too far apart I might have to introduce A, then B, then more details on each, to keep the introductions close together.

Deciding whether certain details are better communicated in the figure, the figure caption, or the main text also depends on the layout.

Knowing how large the section/subsections headings are may influence my choice to use less of them, and group some items into the same section, because I find excessive division into subsections makes things harder to read.

And I'll admit this is weird, but somehow this all applies even though I know a journal is going to reformat and re-typeset my work anyway.

I fear that, even though I write technical (and not advertising) material, you'd probably not want to receive an email from me, lest I use bold font at some point to highlight a key point or something ;-)

kkfxOP3y ago

Hum... I think I understand your point but... That's seems more related to marketing than scientific publishing and probably is a widespread style and the reason why many found modern papers boring and deprived of any sentiment...

I understand there are time and "publish or perish" constraints but IMO, maybe in a romantic vision perhaps unrealistic now, a publication should be something BIG, in the sense "I do not publish a small observed thing who happen to be not that special, just a small advancement in something AS A PAPER", should be published as a talk in some conference, in a news group/ML with some colleagues etc but not more than that, feeds form ArXiv and alike are already too much charged to saturate them even more. A paper should be a kind of gem, something that mark a potentially important advancement, observation etc, something anyone interesting in a field and probably some others would read it very attentively.

Caring the presentation like a mechanical article is more a mass-production of articles I expect from a tabloid...

Oh, about certain journals: those who ask for certain files formats (like .doc/x) or give PURE CRAPPY templates should IMVO get what they deserve: be ignored spreading the voice that those who publish with them will be badly seen by their peer just because of the crappy journal choice. I understand their need to be consistent, but they MUST gives state-of-art LaTeX templates, docbook etc not crap. I'm not a scientist and very rarely have had to write small stuff about certain companies infra design and well... I have had hard time not telling some others humans what I think they should do with their stuff... In that case I feel the pain of those who have to deal with them regularly!

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