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Pollen: the book is a program

docs.racket-lang.org

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Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#21

Post by jv22222 »

dfischer wrote: post #15
SwellJoe wrote: post #10

It's interesting to see a somewhat widespread shift away from the separation of code, templates, styles, and text model of publishing things (mostly websites, but most publishing can be boiled down to that if you squint), where code/templates/style get merged into one. React does this. Pollen seemingly takes it even further and sticks the text in the code, too. Or, rather sticks the code in the text, I guess. It's a…

When I learned HTML in the 90's and early 2000's you got a strong notion that they were separate concerns. When I was learning react when it came out I had such a visceral reaction I just wanted to run away. After coding within react for the past couple years I strongly feel that react has got it right. A concern is after all a generality that has the potential to generate a strong bias. My lesson is that concerns sh…

At the moment my favorite thing to do is think about each web page as a cohesive collection of components that are the sum of what it takes to make that web page work.

ie css, html and javascript for that page contained within that page.

Then, as you notice common use cases accross pages start to abstract them to a central library (be it js, css).

This way it makes it easy to develop any size application because each page is coded as needed and code relevant to each page is always right there with it.

I've worked on plenty of codebases that start out with a central library and then build outward but they always seem harder to maintain due multiple layers of abstraction.

I guess, in summary, this method is a way to lazy load abstraction.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#22

Post by Semiapies »

zeamaize wrote: post #17

> I chose the lozenge as the command character because a) it appears in almost every font, b) it’s barely used in ordinary typesetting, c) it’s not used in any programming language that I know of, and d) its shape and color allow it to stand out easily in code without being distracting. > If you’re using DrRacket, you can use the Insert Command Char button at the top of the editing window to — you guessed it — insert…

It's perfectly fine if and only if you're on a Mac. It gets bad on every other platform.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#23

Post by peatmoss »

Tehnix wrote: post #6

Hmm, is there a cheatsheet or crash course for it? Not particularly interested in reading a book just to get my editing game on. Just throw me in the deep water with the basics, and then I'll jump around to what I need. Would consider using this instead of LaTeX for my thesis, but not so much if the time investment is too much.

If your university has requirements around formatting (most do), then you'll likely spend many hours making anything that isn't LaTeX (or, blech, Word) do the right thing. For a thesis, your best case is to just use a university provided LaTeX template and then spend as little time bike shedding as humanly possible.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#24

Post by jacobolus »

Semiapies wrote: post #22
zeamaize wrote: post #17

> I chose the lozenge as the command character because a) it appears in almost every font, b) it’s barely used in ordinary typesetting, c) it’s not used in any programming language that I know of, and d) its shape and color allow it to stand out easily in code without being distracting. > If you’re using DrRacket, you can use the Insert Command Char button at the top of the editing window to — you guessed it — insert…

It's perfectly fine if and only if you're on a Mac . It gets bad on every other platform.

If you actually need to use this seriously there are ways of customizing keyboard layouts and text input on every platform and every reasonable text editor.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#25

Post by gyrgtyn »

whalesalad wrote: post #16

Is the ‘lozenge’ a Racket-ism or is it unique to this project? I understand the logic around using a character that’s hardly used in regular writing – to avoid escaping – but it seems as though it would be hard to use in practice.

I might be remembering wrong since it's been a while since I went through the tutorial, but I think you can use any character you want for the delimiter because lisp. He just likes the lozenge.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#26

Post by wodenokoto »

zeamaize wrote: post #17

> I chose the lozenge as the command character because a) it appears in almost every font, b) it’s barely used in ordinary typesetting, c) it’s not used in any programming language that I know of, and d) its shape and color allow it to stand out easily in code without being distracting. > If you’re using DrRacket, you can use the Insert Command Char button at the top of the editing window to — you guessed it — insert…

He also advocate not using underline to denote links. In his practical typography book he practically hides all hyperlinks.

I also find his redesigns of documentation pages uninviting to read.

I find Butterick to be a passionate, opinionated, hard working, but ultimately a poor designer.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#27

Post by wodenokoto »

Tehnix wrote: post #6

Hmm, is there a cheatsheet or crash course for it? Not particularly interested in reading a book just to get my editing game on. Just throw me in the deep water with the basics, and then I'll jump around to what I need. Would consider using this instead of LaTeX for my thesis, but not so much if the time investment is too much.

Markdown to Latex (via pandoc) might be a better option if you don't want to write/compose in latex.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#28

Post by geokon »

these short descriptions I've read don't seem to answer this question for me - how is this different from orgmode + org-babel + HTML/PDF export? See like reinventing the wheel for one language, or am I missing something?

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#29

Post by yorwba »

zeamaize wrote: post #17

> I chose the lozenge as the command character because a) it appears in almost every font, b) it’s barely used in ordinary typesetting, c) it’s not used in any programming language that I know of, and d) its shape and color allow it to stand out easily in code without being distracting. > If you’re using DrRacket, you can use the Insert Command Char button at the top of the editing window to — you guessed it — insert…

GNU/Linux, (freebsd?) with https://fcitx-im.org : Type Ctrl+Shift+Alt+U, Begin typing "lozenge", select the character with Alt-2 after "loz". ◊

Same for "black lozenge" ⧫, "rightwards two-headed triple dash arrow" ⤐, "islamic ligature bismillah ar-rahman ar-raheem" ﷽.

Unicode input can be easy if you have an input method with fuzzy search and aliases (e.g. "up tack" ⊥ shows up when you search for "bottom")

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#30

Post by setr »

jacobolus wrote: post #24
Semiapies wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's perfectly fine if and only if you're on a Mac . It gets bad on every other platform.

If you actually need to use this seriously there are ways of customizing keyboard layouts and text input on every platform and every reasonable text editor.

You can also change the lozenge operator to a different character. Its just convenient to pick one you won't ever have to escape
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