I am not a really intelligent person, but having an ability to caps while being in caps (that's how a Nota word is written on the example) is kind of too xzibit-like.
Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
71–80 of 217 posts
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#72> 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…
It is needed. I hate reading pdfs on my 24" or 32" monitor. I hate reading them on my Phone. The main thing that my father complained about when switching from Blackberry to iPhone, was missing PDF reflow feature. Basically the only screen where I find pdfs comfortable to read, is on the 12.9" iPad, and only if the author has the same font-size preferences as me.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
OK but then what is the thing in the middle, between documents and applications? There are fantastic, beautiful interactive experiences (for lack of a better word) that are obviously not documents (they can't be represented on paper, there is code running) but they're not really applications, either (they are fully offline, self-contained, state that's only evident on the page). But they are, universally: dynamic. Ex…
Ha, I was totally thinking about the watch blog too! I think that one is rather a special case. You could print it out with the first still of each bit and probably get out 90% of the content/context, and modify document to print out a few stills from each interactive part and get the same intellectual content. In it's case, the interactivity is superfluous, it's there to spark joy. It's really an example of a docume…
I strongly disagree with the idea that the interactive elements are only there to "spark joy" - in both of the cases you mentioned, the interactive elements are pretty fundamental. Their purpose is to let you get somewhat hands-on with the concepts the text is discussing - to allow you to take apart the watch yourself, at your own pace, and understand what all the pieces are doing.
I'm sure you can convey the same information in text format (like you say, you could just print out the page), but these particular sites would be a lot weaker, because part of their explanatory power is the interactivity.
The original quote was that dynamism was "the last thing I want in a document", and I think these interactive diagrams and explainers directly show how useful dynamism can be in conveying information.
That's not to say that all dynamism is good - I don't usually want you to use Javascript to just load a new page, my browser can do that just fine - but every medium can be abused. That doesn't mean that medium is bad!
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#74> A ¬a document compiles to a JavaScript program, meaning it's easy to: > * View documents on any device that has a web browser. Ah yes, a JS runtime and a browser, 2 things which are feasible to develop and definitely not massive black boxes. I love the idea. I just think it would be better being a format unto itself, or at least not requiring JS and/or a browser. Decoupling from these at least permits other lang…
It used to be marketed as "for the browser" in previous HN posts, but now it looks like it was taken out.
If the tool aims to allow to create documents and papers and does not support static output then I don't get how that would work.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can I make a simple point? As an academic, 99% of my time is spent doing two things: 1. Writing statistical computations using a language like R or python. 2. Writing English text. The most important thing about a document language is that it should prioritize those things. For example, here's why Rmarkdown/Quarto is better than TeX. A TeX document starts: \documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article} \usepackage{amsmath} \u…
I don't get the problem. If 99% of your documents need the same packages and formatting, then all you need to do in LaTeX is create a template (eg via Yasnippet in Emacs) or dump it all in a LaTeX class file and then import it in your frontmatter, and Bob's your uncle. There are many frustrating things about LaTeX but I don't see how this is one of them.
Probably that's true. But first, I don't know how to create a class file, or a template (if that is a LaTeX thing). And since I've never seen anyone else do this, I guess that most academics don't either.
Second, my point isn't just about the specific issue, it's that this issue reveals how TeX thinks about the world. It thinks you want to spend your time writing TeX. No, I want to spend my time writing English. Here's another example. This is how you embed an image in quarto - it's just markdown:
\begin{figure}[t]
\includegraphics{path/to/image}
\centering
\end{figure}
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#76Similar: - https://pandoc.org/ - https://quarto.org/ - https://markdoc.dev/ - https://mdxjs.com/ - https://typst.app/
Pandocs list of supported formats is impressive!
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surprised more legal docs aren’t tracked like git, with pull requests
Cause git ain’t user friendly enough for lawyers and they use word not a plain text editor which doesnt make it easy to see the diffs. But yes ;)
Style and substance separation is easy and should be a requirement. Legal is pure text "programming" and what I mean is that the style of the text has zero bearing on the judicial process.
The benefits of working at the proper level of abstraction compound. It enables tech like diffs and git, which then nicely solves a bunch of other problems as well. Using Word completely side-steps all those benefits. Sure, you get a few nice buttons, but that's literally it. You are trapped forever with no way forward.
This feels like actually programming in Word and manually highlighting comments to be green or something. It's a travesty IMO.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#78Hi, Nota creator here. A high-level comment: After developing the initial prototype you see in the webpage, I've since gone back to the drawing board. I'm working on developing a firmer foundation for issues like: - How do you interleave content and computation? See: https://arxiv.org/abs/2310.04368 - How do different syntaxes make different document tasks easy, hard, or impossible? See: https://github.com/cognitive-…
If you want another data point, I made my own markup language a while back that aims for markdown-like simplicity while making it easy to define simple macros and operators: http://breuleux.github.io/quaint/
It's pretty extensive. I still use it for my own writing, although I'm probably the only one.
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#79I do not know.
I thing Emacs org-mode is better and less Javascript-dependant. Also https://docusaurus.io/ is very nice and flexible.
I suggest to look at these two to extend nota in similar way
Re: Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Cause git ain’t user friendly enough for lawyers and they use word not a plain text editor which doesnt make it easy to see the diffs. But yes ;)
Style and substance separation is easy and should be a requirement. Legal is pure text "programming" and what I mean is that the style of the text has zero bearing on the judicial process. The benefits of working at the proper level of abstraction compound. It enables tech like diffs and git, which then nicely solves a bunch of other problems as well. Using Word completely side-steps all those benefits. Sure, you get…
I think markdown might be the solution here.