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Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

textframe.app

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Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#21

Post by 0des »

dang wrote: post #14
sourcecodeplz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is almost always how it is sadly. Either this or you have to know someone that can submit it for you etc. It’s sad but it’s how it is.

That's not true! Of course it can be frustrating to try to get attention when so many other things are competing for it, and when randomness plays a large role. But it's simply not the case that most things make the front page as a result of vote manipulation, or similar things.

I think part of this is due to the way sometimes ycombo endorsed projects can get special treatment, and sometimes come pre-loaded with canned comments that all show up at once. (There is one on the front page right now that I suspect is up to something like this). Perhaps that can be worked on from the HN-side to make a better appearance that all submissions are treated equally.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#22

Post by mceoin »

This is a really interesting and deceptively simple idea. "Animate technical papers" seemed (to me) like a silly concept as a one-liner, but the example really does the media format justice and totally changed my mind - why hasn't this been done before!

Well done Rahul!

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#24

Post by Outofthebot »

lab wrote: post #23

Super impressive Wysiwyg editor. Which part of the product did you build first? Did you build an example output page first the the editor, or did you start from the editor itself?

Thank you!

Started with the editor view itself, and then built the final output page afterwards.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#25

Post by nobrains »

Hi Rahul, here is some critique as a user / reader:

- While I was reading (left column), the image (right column) changed but I did not catch it, since my focus was on the left column

- Sometimes when I was reading and the image changed, I was not sure which part of the reading section the new image referred to.

- Due to the 2 above things, I had to do a lot of left and right eye movements with every scroll of the mouse wheel.

Now, I am not sure of the best solutions for the above problems, but just wanted to bring these "user experience" challenges to your attention.

Nice work!

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#26

Post by sgt »

I 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 there needs to be another value proposition here that perhaps you haven't identified yet.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#27

Post by muzani »

sgt wrote: post #26

I 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 strongly disagree. I like reading technical papers but I'm not smart enough for them. I'd draw lots of sketches for math class, architecture, algorithms. I've actually been running technical papers through GPT-3 to try to simplify parts before reading them.

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#29

Post by fractallyte »

This is great!

Even more so, because it might be a glimpse of a 'next-gen' PDF format.

PDF can include vector graphics. In the same way that SVG encompasses both static and animated images, there's no reason why similar graphics in a 'PDF-next' document shouldn't be animatable, with a fall-back to static images for printed output...

The next step would be to get together with Adobe/Apple/Microsoft and convene a panel of experts to thrash out the details ;-)

Re: Show HN: I made a no-code tool to create animated technical papers

#30

Post by htshnr »

sgt wrote: post #26

I 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 heavily disagree with this. I went through the example papers on the website and found that the animations made a huge positive impact on my experience. While people who prefer non-animated versions of papers can read them already, something like this could help a lot of people who generally may get bored or have an aversion to reading long static text.

If in your paper you are going to try and explain abstract concepts in words and expect the reader to visualise things in their head, why not make it easier by dynamically rendering it out alongside the paper?

I think this is a very cool innovation in an area that is pretty old (research papers), and something that with a proper go-to-market strategy could end up having wide adoption.

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