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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

#12
post #4

This looks very cool. Have you (jdoliner or anyone else) used this to publish a book?

Matthew Butterick uses it to publish all his current books (as far as I know), check out some of them at: * https://beautifulracket.com/ (and this about making it https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/racketcon.html ) * https://practicaltypography.com/

One of your links https://practicaltypography.com/ redirects to this https://practicaltypography.com/graylist.html a site that has no content and asks to pay for something.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#13
post #12
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matthew Butterick uses it to publish all his current books (as far as I know), check out some of them at: * https://beautifulracket.com/ (and this about making it https://beautifulracket.com/appendix/racketcon.html ) * https://practicaltypography.com/

One of your links https://practicaltypography.com/ redirects to this https://practicaltypography.com/graylist.html a site that has no content and asks to pay for something.

If you read it and follow the instructions, you will see how to access the original link without needing to purchase anything.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#14
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of your links https://practicaltypography.com/ redirects to this https://practicaltypography.com/graylist.html a site that has no content and asks to pay for something.

If you read it and follow the instructions, you will see how to access the original link without needing to purchase anything.

So i follow a link, supposedly about a book, and i see a wall of text trying to sell me something with no information what that something is.

That reminds me of this: “But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?” “Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#15

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 should be taken with a grain of salt, and be willing to try new things with as little as bias as possible; and then form a new opinion, maybe a slightly different concern.

P.s I have also started writing CSS in our presentational focuses react components and I couldn't be happier. It naturally did a BEM-like architecture. I highly recommend it. I say this with extensive experience of CSS architecture for applications.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#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.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#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 the command character.

> If you’re using a different editor, here’s how you type it:

> Mac: Option + Shift + V > Windows: holding down Alt, type 9674 on the num pad > GNU/Linux, BSD: Type Ctrl + Shift + U, then 25CA, then Enter

> For more information on entering arbitrary Unicode glyphs, see Wikipedia.

Jesus Christ that's a terrible design.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#18

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.

Yeah, even just would be better.

Re: Pollen: the book is a program

#19

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.

It's unique to Pollen. In my experience I just remapped a key to insert it and forgot about it.
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