[IPOL discuss] Ipol articles

[Nicolas Limare]

> The questions are:
> 
> 1-The IPOL Latex style looks fine. Any amendments or additions?

* Why no IPOL logo header? I have a vector version of you want. I
  think every journal does it, it is good to quickly identify the
  journal, and I like it.

* Why are the new commands named with a CamelCase name (ipolSetYear,
  ipolSetDOI, ...)? I had the impression that the usage in LaTeX
  programming was to use lowercase names.

* Why are new commands and environments defined instead of redefining
  standard ones (\maketitle instead of \ipolMaketitle,
  \begin{ipolAbstract} instead of \begin{abstract})?

* The ONLY link mentionned in the PDF must be the DOI link,
  http://dx.doi.org/10.5201/xxxx, because it is the only one that will
  always be valid. There can be no direct link to the demo or code,
  and no link to http://www.ipol.im/anything, because these links
  will be broken eventually. That's the whole point of using DOIs.

* Who will produce the PDF, the authors or "IPOL"? Which material will
  IPOL receive, the PDF file or the LaTeX source plus graphics? I
  think IPOL should produce the pdf from the source, because we want
  to keep the possibility to edit the articles or convert them to
  another format in the future. Producung the PDF ourself also allows
  us to produce light low-resolution versions for screen and heavy
  high-resolution versions for print, and edit the PDF metadata.

* Do we allow any LaTeX package, or is there a limited list? If we
  allow "any" package, can we be sure we still can produce the PDF 5
  years later? I think there should be a fixed header (everything
  before \begin{document}, used for every article, which includes all
  the LaTeX packages we want to allow.

* Are the IPOL articles expected to be compiled with latex or
  pdflatex? I think pdflatex should be chosen, because it is the
  recent and active implementation of LaTeX. This means that raster
  graphics will be included from PNG files and vector graphics from
  PDF files.

> 2-How to insert the .pdf in the IPOL article? if no smarter
> inclusion solution is found. I propose to be unoriginal, and to do
> like the other online journals: a "download pdf" button, like for
> example at SIAM J. of Imaging Science.

Comments on each viewer:
* PDF plugin
  I do not have a pdf plugin installed in my browsers. 72% of the
  IPOL visitors have a PDF plugin. Version 10 of the Adobe Reader
  plugin is not available for Linux, and I know some people wo do not
  want to use the verion 9 either because it had some security
  vulnerabilities uncorrected for a long time.

* Flash Flex reader
  90% of the IPOL visitors have a Flash plugin. This viewer
  Failed with one pdf with this error:
    displayPdfWithFlex.php
    ERROR This file is too complex to render- SWF only supports 65536
    shapes at once\nNot implemented yet!
  When it works (with most of the PDFs), it works well and is almost
  as comfortable as reading the PDF in a local PDF reader
  software. Too bad the player has to mention the software vendor, no
  other software we use has such conditions.

* JavaScript pdfjs reader
  97% of the IPOL visitors have JavaScript enabled. This viewer fails
  on the same complex PDF as the Flash viewer. I feel it is usable,
  but vusually inferior to the other options. Worst problem: the
  links are not clickable.

So, I think that the IPOL articles published in a PDF format should be
displayed by the best of these options, depending on the browser
capacities, ie
- use the local PDF plugin if available
- else, use the Flash viewer if Flash is available and the viewer
  succeeds in displaying the PDF,
- else, use the JavaSvript viewer if JS is available and the viewer
  succeeds in displaying the PDF

In addition, the PDF file should always be directly available. And I
think an HTML alternative version, even partial, could really be
useful to quickly scan the article and use the links.

Finally, I think we need a full example of how an article page would
look in IPOL to be able to test the ergonomy and have an informed
opinion.

-- 
Nicolas LIMARE - CMLA - ENS Cachan    http://www.cmla.ens-cachan.fr/~limare/
IPOL - image processing on line                          http://www.ipol.im/
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