Nota is a language for writing documents, like academic papers and blog posts

Post by kimi » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 7:31 AM UTC

bow_ wrote: post #55

kimi wrote: post #39

Why do we need a language that creates a text page by compiling to JS? the same set of goals are handled by AsciiDoc. Real publishers (eg Oreilly) use AsciiDoc as their input format to create books and websites.

I can second AsciiDoc. It hits the sweet spot between Markdown (arguably more suited for short-ish content) and LaTeX (full-blown academic papers with citations, formulas, etc.). Have been using AsciiDoc for the past few years and loving it, only falling back to Markdown on places where AsciiDoc is not (yet?) available. GitHub and GitLab, for example, supports rendering AsciiDoc. PyPI unfortunately has not supported…

Post by mr_mitm » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 7:36 AM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #75

nanna wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

    \newcommand{\image}[2]{\begin{figure}[t]\includegraphics{#2}\caption{#1}\label{#2}\centering\end{figure}}

    \image{caption}{path/to/image}

Post by runeks » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 7:48 AM UTC

fbdab103 wrote: post #7

kstrauser wrote: post #3

So: * 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…

Post by xeyownt » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 8:21 AM UTC

mr_mitm wrote: post #83

dash2 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand your frustration. Maybe it helps to know where this problem comes from. TeX is extremely powerful and lets you create arbitrary documents. This is the first time I heard of quarto, but apparently it makes a lot of choices for you that you understandably don't really care about. Instead of developing quarto, one could have simply written a LaTeX class that defines a function like so: \newcommand{\image}[2…

Post by dmulligan » Fri, Oct 20, 2023, 8:43 AM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #64

wcrichton wrote: post #46

Hi, 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-…

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…

   \documentclass{article}

   \title{Natural selection in the Health and Retirement Study}
   \author{XXX}
   \date{September 2023}

   \begin{document}

   \maketitle

   \begin{abstract}
   I investigate natural selection on polygenic scores in the contemporary US, using the Health and Retirement Study.
   Results partially support the economic theory of fertility as an explanation for natural selection: among both white and black respondents, scores which correlate negatively (positively) with education are selected for (against).
   Selection coefficients are larger among low-income and unmarried parents, but not among younger parents or those with less education.
   I also estimate effect sizes corrected for noise in the polygenic scores. 
   \end{abstract}

   \end{document}