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Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

tritium.legal

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Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#121

Post by alexnewman »

brundolf wrote: post #23

Feedback: the UI feels like a direct reference to VSCode, which is familiar to software developers, but not to lawyers. If you're hoping this will be adopted by lawyers, I would focus on making the UX familiar to them . Look at software that they already use, and mimic those idioms insomuch as it makes sense to do so. I would also have the base web domain link to a normal home/info page, not to the demo directly. And…

There's a couple ways to skin it. In fields where people are happy with products, i think familiarity is good. In fields where people hate the products, you get to go in tabla rasa. In this case they take advantage of the form of the interface through multisearch et al. Instead of resembling legal software, I wonder if they should resemble a court or a briefcase?

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#122

Post by jeroenhd »

I don't know what sort of bug this is, but if I try the preview in Firefox on macOS and hit ' or " the editor inserts the word "Dead". It looks like the editor is using ctrl+z on macOS which is... a choice. On the other hand, at least it seems to treat the home/end keys normally, which is infuriatingly hard to make macOS do.

That's probably a dead key issue (one reason custom renderers for web applications are so tedious to program) but I find it very funny to have a dedicated "Dead" key. Useful for people dealing with wills a lot, I suppose!

Edit: same is true for Chrome, so it's probably a Tritium issue and not a browser issue...

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#123

Post by conartist6 »

philsnow wrote: post #45
blacksmith_tb wrote: post #18

It's a catchy name, though ironically tritium is not legal in the US, generally[1] (for "frivolous purposes"). Guess this is serious software! 1: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/10/30.19

I pine for a DSL for legal documents, both because it’s tedious and tiresome to parse prose like this: > Except for persons who manufacture, process, produce, or initially transfer for sale or distribution self-luminous products containing tritium, krypton-85, or promethium-147, and except as provided in paragraph (c) of this section, any person is exempt from the requirements for a license set forth in section 81 of…

I have designed CSTML with that exact set of usage and features in mind. It would be absolutely perfect for what you describe. I badly need investors though. Know any lawyers interested in investing in a product like you are describing?

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#124

Post by piker »

jeroenhd wrote: post #122

I don't know what sort of bug this is, but if I try the preview in Firefox on macOS and hit ' or " the editor inserts the word "Dead". It looks like the editor is using ctrl+z on macOS which is... a choice. On the other hand, at least it seems to treat the home/end keys normally, which is infuriatingly hard to make macOS do. That's probably a dead key issue (one reason custom renderers for web applications are so ted…

Awesome bug report! Thank you. Let me check into it. Would be even better to understand if you could replicate it on the Desktop application.

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#125

Post by artursapek »

This is really cool. I’ve recently also had an observation about the modern lawyer’s toolset: they have no idea what version control is. Lawyers email around countless duplicate copies of .docx files as their version control. “Red line” files only hold a single revision. This can definitely be improved upon.

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#126

Post by chrismorgan »

eviks wrote: post #119
chrismorgan wrote: post #88

If you want people to use it on the web: do not under any circumstances use the pure-canvas approach. You must use real DOM, or it will be an endless frustration that turns many people away. I’ve written about the problems quite a few times, look through https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=chrismorgan+pure+... if you’re interested. If you’re not intending it to be used via the web, don’t worry. But it’s a gene…

Wait, which 2 do you expect to become usable?

It might not be particularly visible from outside just yet, but we’ve reached the stage where a lot of the fundamentals (which are typically deplorable in quick-and-dirty libraries) really are being nailed down quite nicely; and, perhaps more importantly, where a lot of the different teams are sharing work and collaborating on libraries, rather than each project starting from scratch. The momentum around AccessKit is the most visible example of this.

The Linebender community is a very promising venue for such collaboration, and there are at least four organisations investing quite a bit into this and related endeavours.

I won’t name any specific two libraries. It also depends a little on whether you’re targeting web tech only, or web and desktop, or desktop. (Or mobile.)

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#127

Post by piker »

gamblor956 wrote: post #97

There have been Word add-ons that do all of this for a while now, specifically targeted at lawyers. Why would a law firm give up Word for this? That's your competition and unlike techies they're not going to waste time on an MVP, they want and need a finished product.

Because the add-ins are crap and they know it. But you're right: the risk here is purely technical.

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#128

Post by panzi »

z3t4 wrote: post #102
chrismorgan wrote: post #88

If you want people to use it on the web: do not under any circumstances use the pure-canvas approach. You must use real DOM, or it will be an endless frustration that turns many people away. I’ve written about the problems quite a few times, look through https://hn.algolia.com/?type=comment&query=chrismorgan+pure+... if you’re interested. If you’re not intending it to be used via the web, don’t worry. But it’s a gene…

You do get a lot for free with the DOM, but it's messy, works differently between different browser and you have to constantly fight it. With your own rendering engine it's more work but you have much more freedom and can get better performance.

With DOM you get accessibility integration. At least in the EU if you provide a web service you have to be accessible, otherwise you can get sued.

Re: Show HN: Tritium – The Legal IDE in Rust

#129

Post by sails »

piker wrote: post #24
brundolf wrote: post #23

Feedback: the UI feels like a direct reference to VSCode, which is familiar to software developers, but not to lawyers. If you're hoping this will be adopted by lawyers, I would focus on making the UX familiar to them . Look at software that they already use, and mimic those idioms insomuch as it makes sense to do so. I would also have the base web domain link to a normal home/info page, not to the demo directly. And…

Great feedback; and I do agree. The HN link goes to the app itself because we're impatient, but there is an actual landing page most visitors hit. I've gone back and forth on the UX idea, and while I do agree, it's important that Tritium selects for users that are going to be able to quickly adopt the newer concepts. Just simply presenting a "better Word" isn't really going to move the needle. It's really a shift in…

Figure out how to make it uncompromisingly productive for power users and then dumb it down, not the other way around way around
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