This is actually a really nice idea. In my current gig we write technical documentation (before implementing) that has both words/sentences and visuals in it. My co-workers have to approve the document before I (or somebody else) implements it. This would be a really great way to read such documents.
Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
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Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#32This is actually a really nice idea. In my current gig we write technical documentation (before implementing) that has both words/sentences and visuals in it. My co-workers have to approve the document before I (or somebody else) implements it. This would be a really great way to read such documents.
Hi rkuska, that's an interesting use case I'd really like to explore.
Do you mind emailing me at rahul@textframe.app?
Would love to see if I could help you and your co-worker's workflow at all.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#33This is incredible! I spend a lot of time thinking about how reading can be enhanced with visual aids for language learning, and am in the process of building something similar for visual story telling. I absolutely love how you’ve managed to make the visual content feel so fluidly combined with the text!
Super impressive, and inspiring for my own pursuits :)
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#34Thumbs up. Enjoyed the demo.
As someone who reads technical papers and is a visual learner, I enjoyed this demonstration a lot. I'd imagine website/webapp-based electronic textbooks favoring this format.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#35I 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…
I'm a bit more positive: it might help to engage less technical readers, a bit like the popular science magazines. It does depend on how good your text and animations are, though: it takes a lot of time and effort to communicate in this style to laymen, which would make this service very niche.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#36Love it. Personally I would love a slightest bit of resistance while I scroll to the next page or animation pane. The fluidity is kinda weird to me.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#37I 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.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#38Nice idea. We need more tools to build various explainers. Ideally, embeddable.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#39I like the idea, but as someone who might use this type of tool, you need to say somewhere fairly early on that there is a way for me to download my "paper" and host it myself.
I'd never start putting significant work into writing a paper, or book, on a platform which might close and take all my work & animations with it.
Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers
#40Love it. Personally I would love a slightest bit of resistance while I scroll to the next page or animation pane. The fluidity is kinda weird to me.
Yeah, like in the bitcoin one it's a bit too much - like if I am reading at a normal rate the diagrams are just freaking out to the right.
And I would normally scroll to the full next page rather than scroll to each paragraph, which also then means you skip the animations.
Also the text is really weirdly formatted in the bitcoin paper - like lots of paragraphs that are only half a sentence.
Also a lot of the diagrams don't mean much, like the bitcoin one has "1 CPU is 1 vote" in the text, and then the diagram is an image of a CPU and an arrow to some text that says 1 vote. For me, the diagrams are supposed to add something, and this just says the same thing twice.
Apologies if this is a bit critical as the tool looks like a lot of thought has gone into it, but the examples given don't give me a good reading experience in the style that I personally read. For examples of this done well, there is this site: https://distill.pub/2020/communicating-with-interactive-arti... but the common thread here is that the diagrams and images add to the text rather than repeat it.