Quick reading tells me this is Pandoc[1] but in JavaScript. Interesting, would love to see a bunch of examples such as a Static Site Generator, etc. to make it easy for people to related to fast and try it out.
Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
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Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#12> There are two main mediums for digital documents: PDFs and web pages. PDFs were designed to mirror physical documents, so they impose the real-world constraints of paper: page breaks, fixed width, and immutable styling. Web pages, by contrast, provides an essential dynamism. Web pages are undeniably the future of digital documents. I actually don't agree with this. I think _not_ having "essential dynamism" where it…
> I actually don't agree with this. I think _not_ having "essential dynamism" where it's not needed is actually a feature, not a bug.
I couldn't agree more. Dynamism is great for web _apps_, but it's the last thing I want in a document
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#13> There are two main mediums for digital documents: PDFs and web pages. PDFs were designed to mirror physical documents, so they impose the real-world constraints of paper: page breaks, fixed width, and immutable styling. Web pages, by contrast, provides an essential dynamism. Web pages are undeniably the future of digital documents. I actually don't agree with this. I think _not_ having "essential dynamism" where it…
I agree with you. Another document is Word document (or whatever the standard is officially called), which is an editable page by page document.
In theory a PDF is a static document that should display the same in any PDF reader.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#14Basically this is markup + code (Javascript), which is a combination targeted by MDX. The last time someone mentioned this, the author said Nota is geared towards documentation, while MDX is geared towards web sites: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31349579 If that is so, I think someone needs to wrap Nota into a product for it to take off. Because while the results look great, fiddling with node.js to build a d…
The fact that Nota comes with a default style (some kind of article style) already puts it in a completely different league than MDX. MDX is ready, willing, and able to use whatever React/Vue/etc framework you use, but that means it doesn't come with any opinions out of the box.
Nota feels to me like it could be plugged in to a static site generator. Except then you have to get the two to cooperate. Still, I think that's an achievable hope for someone a little more dedicated than I am.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#15> There are two main mediums for digital documents: PDFs and web pages. PDFs were designed to mirror physical documents, so they impose the real-world constraints of paper: page breaks, fixed width, and immutable styling. Web pages, by contrast, provides an essential dynamism. Web pages are undeniably the future of digital documents. I actually don't agree with this. I think _not_ having "essential dynamism" where it…
I don't want dynsmism, I want reprodicity.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#16> There are two main mediums for digital documents: PDFs and web pages. PDFs were designed to mirror physical documents, so they impose the real-world constraints of paper: page breaks, fixed width, and immutable styling. Web pages, by contrast, provides an essential dynamism. Web pages are undeniably the future of digital documents. I actually don't agree with this. I think _not_ having "essential dynamism" where it…
> I actually don't agree with this. I think _not_ having "essential dynamism" where it's not needed is actually a feature, not a bug. I couldn't agree more. Dynamism is great for web _apps_, but it's the last thing I want in a document
There are some genuine benefits that come along with. I mean, if I could have auto expand inline footnotes/references in a document, I'd be a happy camper.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#17Basically this is markup + code (Javascript), which is a combination targeted by MDX. The last time someone mentioned this, the author said Nota is geared towards documentation, while MDX is geared towards web sites: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31349579 If that is so, I think someone needs to wrap Nota into a product for it to take off. Because while the results look great, fiddling with node.js to build a d…
> It's like Latex all over again.
LaTeX, or more generally, the TeX family, never went away. It's still the go-to toolkit for writing journal papers in most of the STEM disciplines.
Moreover, Nota is not a direct competitor to the TeX family because Nota generates something for web browsers to read, whereas xxxTeX generates something for PDF readers to read. (And yes, I know xxxTeX can generate other output formats but most people use it to generate PDF.)
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#18So: * More in the space of LaTeX than Markdown (but with elements of each). * Written in JavaScript (so lots of of people can contribute in a language they already know). * MIT license. Nice! I don't know that I have an immediate use for it today, but this looks super nifty. If I did want to write something that needed some LaTeX-y features, and wasn't aiming for publication in a place that required it, I'd give Nota…
TeX was definitely groundbreaking, but I consider it a product of its time. Far too much cleverness in macro expansions and weaving tricks to keep memory usage in check for what are now laughable limits. Missing far too many niceties in comparison to modern languages with more guardrails to protect yourself from silly mistakes. The only way I can write Latex is to heavily rely upon \input{} segments to keep isolated…
Here's a modern take: https://typst.app/
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#19So: * More in the space of LaTeX than Markdown (but with elements of each). * Written in JavaScript (so lots of of people can contribute in a language they already know). * MIT license. Nice! I don't know that I have an immediate use for it today, but this looks super nifty. If I did want to write something that needed some LaTeX-y features, and wasn't aiming for publication in a place that required it, I'd give Nota…
You might also want to look at https://typst.app/.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
TeX was definitely groundbreaking, but I consider it a product of its time. Far too much cleverness in macro expansions and weaving tricks to keep memory usage in check for what are now laughable limits. Missing far too many niceties in comparison to modern languages with more guardrails to protect yourself from silly mistakes. The only way I can write Latex is to heavily rely upon \input{} segments to keep isolated…
Here's a modern take: https://typst.app/
For me, there is one fundamental issue which makes me want to switch from LaTeX -- it can't produce accessible documents (and good HTML would do just fine as accessible). LaTeX is making good progress in this area.
Amazingly (to me) it seems typst is doing even worse than LaTeX, while starting much later! I'm happy to be told they have succeeded in this area of course.