6 ms·

HTML+CSS would provide a fantastic way to view a resume on a web page. However, a resume is more usually forwarded around multiple times via email and then fina

by gnok 14y ago

HTML+CSS would provide a fantastic way to view a resume on a web page. However, a resume is more usually forwarded around multiple times via email and then finally printed for a review. HTML+CSS offers little to no control of how a page would look like once its printed. LaTeX on the other hand, can be optimized with printable fonts, appropriate margins and such like. A PDF with embedded fonts would guarantee that the page would look the same, printed with any computer/OS/printer combination.

wahnfrieden 14y ago
Mostly irrelevant since you can just as easily export a web page to PDF.
- nzmsv 14y ago
  There is a world of difference between a proper typesetting engine (such as LaTeX) and HTML-to-PDF. Box layout, hyphenation, ligatures - the list goes on. Of course, optimizing the typography in your resume is likely unnecessary. But that doesn't make the difference go away.
buu700 14y ago
What makes you say that? Mine is HTML/CSS -- http://buu700.com/cv.pdf http://buu700.com/cv.pdf -- and it seems to be pretty consistent. If anything, I would argue that the fine-grained formatting control you can get with HTML/CSS is basically unsurpassed, especially with rendering tools like wkhtmltopdf available.
- dfc 14y ago
  "I would argue that the fine-grained formatting control you can get with HTML/CSS is basically unsurpassed, especially with rendering tools like wkhtmltopdf available." Best April Fools Day joke ever...
  - buu700 14y ago
    Okay, I'll bite. What can you not easily do (which one would reasonably do in a resume/CV) in terms of formatting, layout, typography, and so on using HTML/CSS(/Bootstrap?)/wkhtmltopdf?
    - dfc 14y ago
      The joke is less funny when you change the punchline and restrict it to resumes only but its still pretty funny. Typography? Seriously? In the context of a resume I would gloss over typography but you mentioned it explicitly. Html/css does not play on the same level as text when it comes to kerning, ligatures, letter spacing, expansion/protrusion, etc. Can you do any of the things microtype does with CSS? Searching the issues of wkhtmlpdf lists 50 something issues with fonts. All of these are no brainers with latex. Wkhtmlpdf does not like negative letter spacing! That's something that my mom does with ms word to squeeze a little more text somewhere without a new line or margin change / page break. How does css/html handle the period after Dr. versus the end of a sentence? Multilingual resumes with different spacing requirements for different languages? Ie what is html/css method for \frenchspacing? Does html/css provide language aware layout decisions like babel/pollyglossia? Line breaking and hyphenation are notoriously horrible with html/css. Can you easily reference your bibtex CV and include a list of your publications in html/css? A list of publications is a must for academic/research jobs. Can you easily change the reference format if you decide to pivot to a new industry that expects a different style than your previous industry? Easily compute lengths of strings on the fly to use a consistent indent? Ie so that your city column consistently shows up in the same place after you include a new job with a date string that is longer than previous jobs. One of the default cv packages on CTAN can draw lines of different lengths depending on how long you were in a position. How do you do date calculations in html/css? Can you then take the length of date and do calculations relative to the margin/font/line hight? (I think its moderncv) I don't need any units in my resume but I bet a lot of fields have a need to use units in accomplishment descriptions in their resumes. What is the html/css equivalent of siunits? How does html/css handle page breaks? What is the css/html equivalent of widow/orphan control? When a resume with a list of long publications goes many pages how does wkhtmlpdf update headers/footers that reference page numbers and section titles? Can it use a different header footer on pages 2+? More generally would you recommend printing a book with html/css? And if not what publishing/document layout features do you think are relevant to a book but not resumes? If you are such a fan of wkhtmlpdf why did you use itext for your resume?

by gnok 14y ago

wahnfrieden 14y ago

Mostly irrelevant since you can just as easily export a web page to PDF.

nzmsv 14y ago
There is a world of difference between a proper typesetting engine (such as LaTeX) and HTML-to-PDF. Box layout, hyphenation, ligatures - the list goes on. Of course, optimizing the typography in your resume is likely unnecessary. But that doesn't make the difference go away.

buu700 14y ago

What makes you say that? Mine is HTML/CSS -- http://buu700.com/cv.pdf http://buu700.com/cv.pdf -- and it seems to be pretty consistent. If anything, I would argue that the fine-grained formatting control you can get with HTML/CSS is basically unsurpassed, especially with rendering tools like wkhtmltopdf available.

dfc 14y ago
"I would argue that the fine-grained formatting control you can get with HTML/CSS is basically unsurpassed, especially with rendering tools like wkhtmltopdf available." Best April Fools Day joke ever...
- buu700 14y ago
  Okay, I'll bite. What can you not easily do (which one would reasonably do in a resume/CV) in terms of formatting, layout, typography, and so on using HTML/CSS(/Bootstrap?)/wkhtmltopdf?
  - dfc 14y ago
    The joke is less funny when you change the punchline and restrict it to resumes only but its still pretty funny. Typography? Seriously? In the context of a resume I would gloss over typography but you mentioned it explicitly. Html/css does not play on the same level as text when it comes to kerning, ligatures, letter spacing, expansion/protrusion, etc. Can you do any of the things microtype does with CSS? Searching the issues of wkhtmlpdf lists 50 something issues with fonts. All of these are no brainers with latex. Wkhtmlpdf does not like negative letter spacing! That's something that my mom does with ms word to squeeze a little more text somewhere without a new line or margin change / page break. How does css/html handle the period after Dr. versus the end of a sentence? Multilingual resumes with different spacing requirements for different languages? Ie what is html/css method for \frenchspacing? Does html/css provide language aware layout decisions like babel/pollyglossia? Line breaking and hyphenation are notoriously horrible with html/css. Can you easily reference your bibtex CV and include a list of your publications in html/css? A list of publications is a must for academic/research jobs. Can you easily change the reference format if you decide to pivot to a new industry that expects a different style than your previous industry? Easily compute lengths of strings on the fly to use a consistent indent? Ie so that your city column consistently shows up in the same place after you include a new job with a date string that is longer than previous jobs. One of the default cv packages on CTAN can draw lines of different lengths depending on how long you were in a position. How do you do date calculations in html/css? Can you then take the length of date and do calculations relative to the margin/font/line hight? (I think its moderncv) I don't need any units in my resume but I bet a lot of fields have a need to use units in accomplishment descriptions in their resumes. What is the html/css equivalent of siunits? How does html/css handle page breaks? What is the css/html equivalent of widow/orphan control? When a resume with a list of long publications goes many pages how does wkhtmlpdf update headers/footers that reference page numbers and section titles? Can it use a different header footer on pages 2+? More generally would you recommend printing a book with html/css? And if not what publishing/document layout features do you think are relevant to a book but not resumes? If you are such a fan of wkhtmlpdf why did you use itext for your resume?