Return to Answer

I think your primary assumption, that LaTeX compiled to PDF is unsuitable for screens, is just wrong.

Instead of asking why authors should not use web format if they don't care what medium content is read in, ask yourself if authors really should not care what medium content is read in. In my opinion, both as an author and reader, they should!
Remember that papers do not just exist to contain results but also to present them. In this regard, for example, it makes quite a difference if the key comparison of two plots is presented side-by-side, top-bottom, single-page... or arbitrarily strewn throughout prose. There are many visual parts in a paper - even formula heavy ones - and their readability and impact depends on the layout.

In that regard, being inflexible and unresponsive is not a deficiency for papers, it is a feature. Raw web content is notorious for having looks somewhere between beautiful and unreadable depending on the device. Making proper responsive cross-platform pages is a time-consuming art in its own right. Heck, reading improperly responsive, improperly cross-platform content is time consuming!

Avoiding that effort by simply enforcing a well-defined layout for everyone is an efficient and effective solution.

At the end of the day, people will be using a typesetting markup language. Regardless whether they are using "web technology", many scientists will need something like LaTeX anyway. There's KaTeX, there's MathJax, there's whatever MS Office uses and they all look like LaTeX. Even if you use HTML/JS, or Markdown, or Jupyter, you will still use something very much like LaTeX.

For many scientists, learning LaTeX isn't some huge extra effort. It's something they have to do anyway.

I think your primary assumption, that LaTeX compiled to PDF is unsuitable for screens, is just wrong.

Instead of asking why authors should not use web format if they don't care what medium content is read in, ask yourself if authors really should not care what medium content is read in. In my opinion, both as an author and reader, they should!
Remember that papers do not just exist to contain results but also to present them. In this regard, for example, it makes quite a difference if the key comparison of two plots is presented side-by-side, top-bottom, single-page... or arbitrarily strewn throughout prose. There are many visual parts in a paper - even formula heavy ones - and their readability and impact depends on the layout.

In that regard, being inflexible and unresponsive is not a deficiency for papers, it is a feature. Raw web content is notorious for having looks somewhere between beautiful and unreadable depending on the device. Making proper responsive cross-platform pages is a time-consuming art in its own right. Heck, reading improperly responsive, improperly cross-platform content is time consuming!

Avoiding that effort by simply enforcing a well-defined layout for everyone is an efficient and effective solution.

At the end of the day, people writing documents from source will be using a typesetting markup language. Regardless whether they are using "web technology", many scientists will need something like LaTeX anyway. There's KaTeX, there's MathJax, there's whatever MS Office uses and they all look like LaTeX. Even if you use HTML/JS, or Markdown, or Jupyter, you will still use something very much like LaTeX.

For many scientists, learning LaTeX isn't some huge extra effort. It's something they have to do anyway.

I think your primary assumption, that LaTeX compiled to PDF is unsuitable for screens, is just wrong.

Instead of asking why authors should not use web format if they don't care what medium content is read in, ask yourself if authors really should not care what medium content is read in. In my opinion, both as an author and reader, they should!
Remember that papers do not just exist to contain results but also to present them. In this regard, for example, it makes quite a difference if the key comparison of two plots is presented side-by-side, top-bottom, single-page... or arbitrarily strewn throughout prose. There are many visual parts in a paper - even formula heavy ones - and their readability and impact depends on the layout.

In that regard, being inflexible and unresponsive is not a deficiency for papers, it is a feature. Raw web content is notorious for having looks somewhere between beautiful and unreadable depending on the device. Making proper responsive cross-platform pages is a time-consuming art in its own right. Heck, reading improperly responsive, improperly cross-platform content is time consuming!

Avoiding that effort by simply enforcing a well-defined layout for everyone is an efficient and effective solution.

At the end of the day, people will be using a typesetting markup language. Regardless whether they are using "web technology", many scientists will need something like LaTeX anyway. There's KaTeX, there's MathJax, there's whatever MS Office uses and they all look like LaTeX. Even if you use HTML/JS, or Markdown, or Jupyter, you will still use something very much like LaTeX.

For most scientists, learning LaTeX isn't some huge extra effort. It's something they have to do anyway.

I think your primary assumption, that LaTeX compiled to PDF is unsuitable for screens, is just wrong.

Instead of asking why authors should not use web format if they don't care what medium content is read in, ask yourself if authors really should not care what medium content is read in. In my opinion, both as an author and reader, they should!
Remember that papers do not just exist to contain results but also to present them. In this regard, for example, it makes quite a difference if the key comparison of two plots is presented side-by-side, top-bottom, single-page... or arbitrarily strewn throughout prose. There are many visual parts in a paper - even formula heavy ones - and their readability and impact depends on the layout.

In that regard, being inflexible and unresponsive is not a deficiency for papers, it is a feature. Raw web content is notorious for having looks somewhere between beautiful and unreadable depending on the device. Making proper responsive cross-platform pages is a time-consuming art in its own right. Heck, reading improperly responsive, improperly cross-platform content is time consuming!

Avoiding that effort by simply enforcing a well-defined layout for everyone is an efficient and effective solution.

At the end of the day, people will be using a typesetting markup language. Regardless whether they are using "web technology", many scientists will need something like LaTeX anyway. There's KaTeX, there's MathJax, there's whatever MS Office uses and they all look like LaTeX. Even if you use HTML/JS, or Markdown, or Jupyter, you will still use something very much like LaTeX.

For many scientists, learning LaTeX isn't some huge extra effort. It's something they have to do anyway.

I think your primary assumption, that LaTeX compiled to PDF is unsuitable for screens, is just wrong.

Instead of asking why authors should not use web format if they don't care what medium content is read in, ask yourself if authors really should not care what medium content is read in. In my opinion, both as an author and reader, they should!
Remember that papers do not just exist to contain results but also to present them. In this regard, for example, it makes quite a difference if the key comparison of two plots is presented side-by-side, top-bottom, single-page... or arbitrarily strewn throughout prose. There are many visual parts in a paper - even formula heavy ones - and their readability and impact depends on the layout.

In that regard, being inflexible and unresponsive is not a deficiency for papers, it is a feature. Raw web content is notorious for having looks somewhere between beautiful and unreadable depending on the device. Making proper responsive cross-platform pages is a time-consuming art in its own right. Heck, reading improperly responsive, improperly cross-platform content is time consuming!

Avoiding that effort by simply enforcing a well-defined layout for everyone is an efficient and effective solution.

At the end of the day, people will be using a typesetting markup language. Regardless whether they are using "web technology", many scientists will need something like LaTeX anyway. There's KaTeX, there's MathJax, there's whatever MS Office uses and they all look like LaTeX. Even if you use HTML/JS, or Markdown, or Jupyter, you will still use something very much like LaTeX.

For most scientists, learning LaTeX isn't some huge extra effort. It's something they have to do anyway.

I think your primary assumption, that LaTeX compiled to PDF is unsuitable for screens, is just wrong.

Instead of asking why authors should not use web format if they don't care what medium content is read in, ask yourself if authors really should not care what medium content is read in. In my opinion, both as an author and reader, they should!
Remember that papers do not just exist to contain results but also to present them. In this regard, for example, it makes quite a difference if the key comparison of two plots is presented side-by-side, top-bottom, single-page... or arbitrarily strewn throughout prose. There are many visual parts in a paper - even formula heavy ones - and their readability and impact depends on the layout.

In that regard, being inflexible and unresponsive is not a deficiency for papers, it is a feature. Raw web content is notorious for having looks somewhere between beautiful and unreadable depending on the device. Making proper responsive cross-platform pages is a time-consuming art in its own right. Heck, reading improperly responsive, improperly cross-platform content is time consuming!

Avoiding that effort by simply enforcing a well-defined layout for everyone is an efficient and effective solution.

At the end of the day, people will be using a typesetting markup language. Regardless whether they are using "web technology", many scientists will need something like LaTeX anyway. There's KaTeX, there's MathJax, there's whatever MS Office uses and they all look like LaTeX. Even if you use HTML/JS, or Markdown, or Jupyter, you will still use something very much like LaTeX.

For most scientists, learning LaTeX isn't some huge extra effort. It's something they have to do anyway.