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Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

textframe.app

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Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#41

Post by sgt »

OneTimePetes wrote: post #37
sgt wrote: post #26

I like the approach and it looks cool, but you might struggle with the target market here. Most people reading technical papers care absolutely zero about the animations in between the diagrams and figures. For example, the Bitcoin whitepaper animations probably bring no value, and I personally would prefer to rather read the PDF version of that. With that in mind, you may still be on to something, but I suspect ther…

That is because the target market usually shuns technical papers, because the tool didnt exist previously. This is for the Projectlead who sends you links to papers, to do "research" for him and wants it visualized in a presentation. Now he does not need you to be his eyes and explaining things in layman terms. Actually i could see this standardized and partially auto-generated for math-papers.

I do not think this is possible to do in LaTeX, which is typically used in science and math papers.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#44

Post by OneTimePetes »

sgt wrote: post #41
OneTimePetes wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is because the target market usually shuns technical papers, because the tool didnt exist previously. This is for the Projectlead who sends you links to papers, to do "research" for him and wants it visualized in a presentation. Now he does not need you to be his eyes and explaining things in layman terms. Actually i could see this standardized and partially auto-generated for math-papers.

I do not think this is possible to do in LaTeX, which is typically used in science and math papers.

and thus will reinvent the wheel - instead of simply including executable javascript into the pdf

All things become browsers given enough time..

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#45

Post by Xevi »

Really cool, but the examples don't work well for me. One scroll step with my mouse on Windows is enough to scroll past some of the intermediary animations. A lot of information is lost because of that. I have to slowly drag the scrollbar with my mouse to view all animations.

Another thing that has been pointed out is that this needs to degrade gracefully for PDFs and printed media.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#46

Post by blowski »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #43

Technical frills are nice and all, but I wish some effort would be put into degrading gracefully. It's impossible to print this paper, for example.

I work in a company with a "no-print" policy, so that doesn't matter to me. I guess there is a question of how it works for, say, blind people but most of our diagrams already have that problem. If this makes the diagram easier to understand for a wider audience, then perhaps this actually helps accessibility.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#47

Post by marginalia_nu »

blowski wrote: post #46
marginalia_nu wrote: post #43

Technical frills are nice and all, but I wish some effort would be put into degrading gracefully. It's impossible to print this paper, for example.

I work in a company with a "no-print" policy, so that doesn't matter to me. I guess there is a question of how it works for, say, blind people but most of our diagrams already have that problem. If this makes the diagram easier to understand for a wider audience, then perhaps this actually helps accessibility.

Technical papers are fairly often printed. It's not a leisure read that you skim through once for the entertainment. You typically need to make margin notes and cross reference other papers a fair bit to actually get any value out of them.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#48

Post by blowski »

marginalia_nu wrote: post #47
blowski wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a company with a "no-print" policy, so that doesn't matter to me. I guess there is a question of how it works for, say, blind people but most of our diagrams already have that problem. If this makes the diagram easier to understand for a wider audience, then perhaps this actually helps accessibility.

Technical papers are fairly often printed. It's not a leisure read that you skim through once for the entertainment. You typically need to make margin notes and cross reference other papers a fair bit to actually get any value out of them.

some technical papers, not all.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#49

Post by marginalia_nu »

blowski wrote: post #48
marginalia_nu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technical papers are fairly often printed. It's not a leisure read that you skim through once for the entertainment. You typically need to make margin notes and cross reference other papers a fair bit to actually get any value out of them.

some technical papers, not all.

I would say most technical literature. Sure there are rare unicorns like Richard Feynman who manage to be geniuses in both communication and science, but even in those cases you need to read carefully and repeatedly to make the most of the text. If anything, it's a danger that you stop paying attention because it's so superficially readable.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#50

Post by cinntaile »

blowski wrote: post #46
marginalia_nu wrote: post #43

Technical frills are nice and all, but I wish some effort would be put into degrading gracefully. It's impossible to print this paper, for example.

I work in a company with a "no-print" policy, so that doesn't matter to me. I guess there is a question of how it works for, say, blind people but most of our diagrams already have that problem. If this makes the diagram easier to understand for a wider audience, then perhaps this actually helps accessibility.

What a weird policy? Why do they do this? Nothing beats paper for understanding something difficult for me, at that point technology is a distraction.
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