Tight margins on the "2009-2021" on-screen template and the ArXiv watermark

[v-iashin]

Hi BMVC/BMVA,

It is known that the BMVC on-screen template holds the industry standard for the tiniest margins.

Nowadays, most of us duplicating publications on ArXiv. After compilation, ArXiv automatically generates a watermark for all submissions which, in the case of BMVC templates, looks pretty awkward and causes an aesthetic discomfort:

Yikes!

I think the main reason why it was done historically this way is the argument of the screen size: https://github.com/BritishMachineVisionAssociation/BMVCTemplate/blob/fdf630802f16fc4a4358db8de572f4f0b2d7386e/bmvc2k.cls#L208-L214 which might no longer be true as we have bigger and better screens now (see margins in CVPR [two columns], NeurIPS, ECCV templates). Also, PDF-reader programs were left to do the margin adjustments as explained later in the same file: https://github.com/BritishMachineVisionAssociation/BMVCTemplate/blob/fdf630802f16fc4a4358db8de572f4f0b2d7386e/bmvc2k.cls#L216-L222

I was wondering if there are any plans to refresh the on-screen template a bit such that it would match the printing version by default (or, at least, to an extent preventing the ArXiv watermark from overlaying the title and author names):

[ndfcampbell]

Hi, we can take a look at this but the fact that we have on-screen reading and the papers are made available open-access on the BMVC website means that I don't think we should globally change the margins for this. If you have a proposed work around (e.g. a title page adjustment that can be added as an option) then I would be happy to take a look but I believe that the style file as it is is much easier to read on screen than e.g. CVPR papers so I don't think we should go back to adding lots of white space - equally we can't do anything that will affect the length of papers currently in the system.

Please feel free to suggest an alteration and it will certainly be considered.

[v-iashin]

Hi Neill,

Thanks for looking into this!

(e.g. a title page adjustment that can be added as an option)

I think it looks fine as it is right now and has its own identity that people recognize.

we can't do anything that will affect the length of papers currently in the system.

True! The idea is to make the content smaller which would correspond to the same page length – please see Figure 1 (a vs b). I am actually not sure why we would need to change the papers which are in the system. This suggestion is rather for the template in 2022.

If you have a proposed work around (e.g. a title page adjustment that can be added as an option) then I would be happy to take a look

The workaround I used twice is to proportionally increase the latex paper size as well as the margins, keeping the same content per page. I changed this line: https://github.com/BritishMachineVisionAssociation/BMVCTemplate/blob/fdf630802f16fc4a4358db8de572f4f0b2d7386e/bmvc2k.cls#L228 by this (I think there is a more elegant way!):

\RequirePackage[twoside,headsep=3mm,papersize={490pt,700pt},inner=23.08mm,outer=20.08mm,top=17.11mm,includehead,bottom=19.11mm,heightrounded]{geometry}

which somehow just "pads" the pages rather than "scales" the content down.

Here is the resulting .pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2005.08271.pdf in the case you would want to see how it fits into other mediums which I miss just from the author's perspective. The document looks as expected when printed on A4 and in Adobe Reader as well as in Firefox and Chrome internal readers. Please note, the margins in this .pdf are way too wide compared to the version which would yield the desired effect (ArXiv watermark is not covering title/name/content).

Either way, I am glad that the idea reached you.