Live data from Hacker News

Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

penrose.cs.cmu.edu

71–80 of 124 posts

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#71
post #2

How do I see the notation? The diagrams sure look beautiful, but I must be missing something obvious… Thanks!

I just noticed there are 3 tabs for a diagram - substance style domain. This seems too hard to use by person, but I look forward to seeing this plugged into chatgpt

It’s sad how artificial “intelligence” is making people immediately give up at just the thought of having to learn something.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#72
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What’s a “normal” tool in this case?

Adobe Illustrator and more importantly, a good graphic designer

Ew, proprietary software that works only on a proprietary operating system.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#73
post #68

A lot of replies here are missing the key idea behind Penrose: that the "substance" and "style" of any mathematical diagram are separable. For example, the "substance" of a diagram might be a collection of sets with known subset relationships: Set A, B, C IsSubset(B, A) IsSubset(C, A) That same substance can then be rendered in many different styles, e.g. as a Venn diagram or as a tree diagram (substance vs. style is…

> substance vs. style is a lot like HTML vs. CSS Given the popularity of frameworks like TailwindCSS, it seems that people here don’t understand the advantage of separating HTML and CSS either, so I’m not sure if this analogy is helpful…

Or that they understand it just fine, but don't think it has a particular advantage worth the extra complexity tradeoff.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#74

I did take a look at the gallery. Penrose is no alternative for the majority of diagrams I can do with mermaid or D2, right? It's more about "mathematical" diagrams instead of ER, UML or EPKs right?

Yes, I think it’s more of an alternative to MetaPost.

That said, I’m intrigued how these two compare?

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#76
post #68

A lot of replies here are missing the key idea behind Penrose: that the "substance" and "style" of any mathematical diagram are separable. For example, the "substance" of a diagram might be a collection of sets with known subset relationships: Set A, B, C IsSubset(B, A) IsSubset(C, A) That same substance can then be rendered in many different styles, e.g. as a Venn diagram or as a tree diagram (substance vs. style is…

> substance vs. style is a lot like HTML vs. CSS Given the popularity of frameworks like TailwindCSS, it seems that people here don’t understand the advantage of separating HTML and CSS either, so I’m not sure if this analogy is helpful…

I think graphs are quite different from HTML. The "substance" in html is far too chaotic compared to the structured data for the graphs.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#77
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_(surname) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose There's enough other Penroses to choose from; sir Roger doesn't own the (sur)name.

Yes, but his name is the obvious one. If I say "Dyson" and you're in the UK, you think of vacuums, "Penrose" and you think of Mathematical Physics. I doubt this would come to court. The main problem is the temerity of using the name of a living person in this way. But, they could have sought permission, in which case, all is well.

> If I say "Dyson" and you're in the UK, you think of

Mathematical Physics :)

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#78
post #75
post #57

The caffeine example is laughable. https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/try/?examples=structural-formula/...

What is laughable about it?

It's completely, utterly wrong. To point out just one problem, the two central rings should be planar. Good thing they picked this one to show in the landing page carousel. That example was enough for me to close the page again.

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#79

I feel like a lot of people are not aware of the tools that are available and they keep building the same thing over and over... or, the other amazing thing missing a feature and this thing now has this feature but lacks completeness of other etc, etc... Which means we are doing two things bad: composability and informing us. What do you think?

What tools were already available for this?

Re: Penrose – Create diagrams by typing notation in plain text

#80
post #75
post #57

The caffeine example is laughable. https://penrose.cs.cmu.edu/try/?examples=structural-formula/...

What is laughable about it?

The displayed structure has nothing to do with how it really looks like [0].

It seems they just used a naive algorithm for automatic atom placement with a goal to minimize overlaps between the atoms.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caffeine

Post reply on HN