Of course it is technically possible, but I haven't seen it done properly. I have never seen a book with math rendered as images that was of satisfactory quality or even close to what PDF can offer. I doubt IEEE explore is an exception, but I don't have an account, so cannot check.
I would like to be able to read a book also on a phone, but I am not going to compromise on quality for that, given that I can just read it on a large tablet in PDF format.
Thank you for the example! Yes, that definitely looks good, but is still just a webpage. Also, it has pictures with bad resolution, and a latex table that has been rendered as an image for some strange reason. So as usual, it is not consistent in its quality, which is usually the problem.
To compare, open the accompanying PDF, which is also provided along with the webpage. It is of MUCH higher quality, which is partially due to the fact that layout is static.
Furthermore, the webpage doesn't support pagination. The problem is turning it into a book, and there doesn't seem to be a good standard that supports HTML+KATEX/MATHJAX properly. In theory there is no reason they shouldn't, as epub support javascript, but in practice it just doesn't work properly.
Isn’t that exactly the point? Please, no pagination on a screen. A web page will do just fine. In fact, that was what the www was conceived for: publishing science.
> open the accompanying PDF, […] of much higher quality.
The only thing that is higher quality in the PDF is the justified alignment and pagination. The figures have the same (poor) resolution.
The bottom line is:
* it is perfectly possible to publish technical papers in a format that is accessible on a phone.
* non-paginated, free flowing output also works better on larger screens (e.g) I can resize the window and have my note-taking app open next to the paper.
* PDFs are still great for annotating and printing, if required.
You are right, the figures have the same poor resolution. I didn't notice that because they just look higher quality in the PDF because they are seen in context.
As for your bottom line:
* Of course you can make HTML pages with KaTeX/MathJax that look great. I have done it myself, and this very HN post also points to such a web page.
* While a webpage is often fine, for anything I will spend a significant amount of time reading, I definitely want a separate entity, a book or a paper, that I can have in my library. There is no such format currently that has satisfactory quality, except for PDF.
* Non-paginated, free flowing output is the only real option for a phone, but does not work well on a large screen. Your IEEE example looks bad on a large screen, compared to a PDF. I am looking at it on a 27 inch screen, and on an iPad 12.9 inch, and it shows me one column, which separates the images from each other and from their context, and makes it harder for me to scan back and forth between related content. Pages provide a context, even though an admittedly rather arbitrary one, and non-paginated text is missing that context. You could do two columns, but how would that work for non-paginated text that knows no boundaries?
* For me resizing is not an issue, I take notes on paper or on my computer, but I can see how that might be important for somebody who is willing to trade reading quality. For me, PDFs are clearly superior for digital books and papers to anything else currently out there, at least if they have been created with care. PDFs that have been created by printing an epub or webpage, on the other hand, are useless for me and land immediately in the garbage bin whenever I encounter them.
I would like to be able to read a book also on a phone, but I am not going to compromise on quality for that, given that I can just read it on a large tablet in PDF format.