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Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

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Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#81

Post by littlestymaar »

Lorkki wrote: post #53
alpaca128 wrote: post #44

I may be rather opinionated on this, but there are literally community efforts to transcribe memes and other pictures containing text so visually impaired people get access to content, and meanwhile about every 3-4 weeks HN features yet another web app that basically takes human readable text and stores it in one of the most inefficient and inaccessible ways possible. It becomes invisible to screenreaders, impossible…

> a developer version of those Instagram pictures of meals at restaurants I guess those pictures are popular because food is easy to relate to, and people build lots of social interactions around eating. Developers also relate to things about code, and like to share those relations among each other. I feel some puzzlement about the format too, though. These days it's so easy to make text on the web look nice, and it'…

But you can't share it on Twitter (which is almost 100% of the use-case for this kind of tools).

Too bad Twitter isn't a tech company, otherwise they could implement something like a code view in tweets. Wait a minute…

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#82

Post by com2kid »

alpaca128 wrote: post #44

I may be rather opinionated on this, but there are literally community efforts to transcribe memes and other pictures containing text so visually impaired people get access to content, and meanwhile about every 3-4 weeks HN features yet another web app that basically takes human readable text and stores it in one of the most inefficient and inaccessible ways possible. It becomes invisible to screenreaders, impossible…

I use fancy code display tools when making slide shows.

Though in my case I have a plugin for Notepad++ that lets me copy syntax highlighted code from NP++ and paste it into PowerPoint with all the highlighting and formatting maintained. Super cool plugin.

I can't just screenshot my editor (VSCode) because I use a theme that many people find violently irritating (DOS Edit).

Anyway, this looks like someone's fun little hacked together project to make something shiny. Making shiny things is fun. No one craps on shader toys for being inaccessible.

If someone tried to use the linked tool to make screenshots and used them in an actual MOOC or any other place for public consumption, yeah, wrong tool for the job. Don't do that. Use one of the dozens of existing tools that pretty print and embed code in an accessible way.

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#83

Post by qbasic_forever »

jeffalyanak wrote: post #50
alpaca128 wrote: post #44

I may be rather opinionated on this, but there are literally community efforts to transcribe memes and other pictures containing text so visually impaired people get access to content, and meanwhile about every 3-4 weeks HN features yet another web app that basically takes human readable text and stores it in one of the most inefficient and inaccessible ways possible. It becomes invisible to screenreaders, impossible…

What would be great is if it generated an SVG with the screen-reader accessible title and description built in. [title] [long description] ...

Why do you even need SVG if you're on the web already though? Nothing in these code pictures requires more than basic CSS and HTML. You can go wild with fonts, gradients, shadows, etc. to make beautiful looking pre and code elements. Tools like prismjs will syntax highlight with spans. Everything is in plain old semantic HTML with aria properties where appropriate.

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#84

Post by SirHound »

neilpanchal wrote: post #52
jaegerpicker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people love the text from an aesthetic view. I don't think we should be against that but rather to advocate the improvement of accessible technology.

Engineering documentation shouldn't be about making pretty pictures, it should be about functionalism and putting that at the top of the list just below accessibility. What do you know, people love fancy and decorative things. Just human nature.

Doesn’t get you shares on Twitter though so shoulds aren’t relevant.

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#87

Post by qbasic_forever »

neilpanchal wrote: post #52
jaegerpicker wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people love the text from an aesthetic view. I don't think we should be against that but rather to advocate the improvement of accessible technology.

Engineering documentation shouldn't be about making pretty pictures, it should be about functionalism and putting that at the top of the list just below accessibility. What do you know, people love fancy and decorative things. Just human nature.

When engineering and art combine though, you get beautiful things like 1970s NASA documentation: https://standardsmanual.com/products/nasa-graphics-standards...

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#88

Post by roywiggins »

strangetortoise wrote: post #46
alpaca128 wrote: post #44

I may be rather opinionated on this, but there are literally community efforts to transcribe memes and other pictures containing text so visually impaired people get access to content, and meanwhile about every 3-4 weeks HN features yet another web app that basically takes human readable text and stores it in one of the most inefficient and inaccessible ways possible. It becomes invisible to screenreaders, impossible…

I think one of the problems here is that people wanna share code snippets on social media, where generally, the other approaches mean linking to an external github gist or similar, which isn't as visible. I'm not sure if I see a good solution, other than suggesting that the "link previews" for social media sites display the code snippet inline, if it's a link to a pastebin/github gists page. Edit: Perhaps something c…

Twitter actually supports picture descriptions. I think it embeds it in the alt-text on the page.

https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptio...

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#89

Post by roywiggins »

alpaca128 wrote: post #79
f-word wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like the alt attribute stopped existing or anything. This simply lets you make what amounts to pretty screencaps of your code

Name one social media/image hosting site that lets you set an alt attribute. And when you actually have control over the content you can use some nice CSS to get the same look with a fraction of the size and 100% accessible.

Twitter does.

https://blog.twitter.com/official/en_us/a/2016/accessible-im...

Re: Show HN: Ray.so – Create images of your code

#90

Post by tomlagier »

alpaca128 wrote: post #79
f-word wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like the alt attribute stopped existing or anything. This simply lets you make what amounts to pretty screencaps of your code

Name one social media/image hosting site that lets you set an alt attribute. And when you actually have control over the content you can use some nice CSS to get the same look with a fraction of the size and 100% accessible.

Twitter: https://help.twitter.com/en/using-twitter/picture-descriptio...

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/214124458607871

Instagram: https://help.instagram.com/503708446705527

It's becoming a lot more common!

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