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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

#31

Post by setr »

geokon wrote: post #28

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?

I'm not sure about that combination of tooling, but I consider pollen to be useful as markdown + customization. Ofc its a full general-purpose language to work with, but I myself just wanted it to solve adding sidenotes, footnotes and simple references.

I also noted others using to handle blog publishing tasks like latest post pages and tags and such

I guess in total its a general html publishing framework, and at least partly notable for being built in a lisp, given htnl's usage of basically s-expressions

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#33

Post by egeozcan »

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…

IMHO, it is a move from separation of file types to separation of actual concerns.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#34

Post by paulriddle »

wodenokoto wrote: post #26
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.

I agree. His book Practical Typography is very hard on the eyes, even looking at the text is uncomfortable. I think he fell into a trap of overdoing things. Like some people when they learn about what you can do with javascript and css add all sorts of annoying visual effects with no unified theme to the whole. They just enter some sort of trance and keep adding.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#35

Post by fantispug »

geokon wrote: post #28

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?

Pollen is a Racket language, and gets parsed into an AST and evaluated. You can programmatically generate correct markup using all of Racket.

Org Babel is more about evaluating code snippets in a variety of languages. Even if you can evaluate to produce org markup that's processed it doesn't have the same level of structural integration.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#36

Post by shalabhc »

I realize it's the norm, but anyone wonder why we're pushing around static content about dynamic programs? Why the dynamic program snippets do not work inline, even though the computer you're reading them on is fully capable of running them?

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#38

Post by gosub »

shalabhc wrote: post #36

I realize it's the norm, but anyone wonder why we're pushing around static content about dynamic programs? Why the dynamic program snippets do not work inline , even though the computer you're reading them on is fully capable of running them?

You should watch "stop drawing dead fish" by Bret Victor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfytHvgHybA

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#39

Post by Ygg2 »

setr wrote: post #30
jacobolus wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is until you find an obscure enough example that uses it.
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