[HN Gopher] Show HN: Clayoven - beautiful website generator aime... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: Clayoven - beautiful website generator aimed at math-heavy sites Author : artagnon Score : 93 points Date : 2021-04-04 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago) (HTM) web link (github.com) (TXT) w3m dump (github.com) | timdaub wrote: | I made something similar with KaTeX and Markdown. Mine is plain. | | Demo: https://timdaub.github.io/SSRP/ | | Source: https://github.com/TimDaub/ssrp | eddieh wrote: | I went with Org-mode and KaTeX, unfortunately there's a bug | with Org-mode where it doesn't insert the trailing space after | inline LaTeX. I never got around to fixing it. I did try to | make mine "beautiful" or at least pleasing to myself. | | Demo: https://eddieh.github.io/stix-org/ | | Code: https://github.com/eddieh/stix-org | egonschiele wrote: | Neat project! Beauty feels like an under-explored part of | programming. It's neat to see how a language can be designed to | be more expressive for a particular use case. I wouldn't make a | call to use a piece of tech at work just for beauty but I | certainly do that all the time in my personal projects. | preommr wrote: | Am I reading something wrong? I thought they meant it outputs | beautiful websites, whereas your comment seems to imply that | it's the code/(library api) that's beautiful. | artagnon wrote: | Outputting beautiful designs is a function of the css, no? | The bundled css is quite minimalist, and it comes packaged | with a relatively simple starter website. | Kiro wrote: | I also thought you meant the output was beautiful and | thought it was strange that there was no demo or example | showing it. | drran wrote: | I use Marker[0] markdown editor, which has built-in support for | MathJax and KaTex for math, and Jekyll, to render my blog to | GitHub. | | [0]: https://github.com/fabiocolacio/Marker . | cseleborg wrote: | The adjective 'beautiful' for software is increasingly becoming a | turn-off for me. Perhaps with the exception of Sublime Text, | there is no software that I routinely use for its pleasing | aesthetics. I'm more interested in fast, intuitive, pragmatic | software. Beautiful makes me thing that other, more important | things have been given lower priority. | | What exactly makes Clayoven beautiful? It seems to have a great | niche purpose. Shouldn't the first adjective be something related | to what math users would value? | artagnon wrote: | Yes, it's not the fastest ssg; there's Zola for that. However, | digging git history with `git log --follow` can take a moment, | and the MathJaX server-side rendering takes 10 seconds on a | math-heavy site. However, incremental builds are the default, | and a full-rebuild is seldom necessary. What makes it beautiful | is the following: | | 1. You don't have a metadata header, like in most SSGs; | timestamp is picked out from git-history, and topics/subtopics | is simply picked out from the folder structure. | | 2. The syntax is terse, and features like un-numbered lists is | excluded on purpose, because mathematicians like to number or | letter everything. | | 3. The implementation of claytext is simple. There is no | complicated markdown-processing, and even hard-wrapped lines | are not allowed. | | 4. There's a dedicated vscode extension for auto-completing | MathJaX. It also triggers a build-on-save, so you can just save | changes in vscode and refresh the browser to see the changes. | | 5. Server-side rendering of math, so that the client isn't | burdened with executing heavy javascript. It actually uses a | custom fork of XyJaX to achieve this for commutative diagrams. | enumjorge wrote: | Websites are largely a visual medium so when you use the word | beautiful most people are going to assume you're describing | the visual aspects of the sites the tool generates, not the | tool itself. And I get that beauty is subjective, but when | you give terseness and arbitrary lack of features such as | unnumbered lists as reasons for why it's beautiful, it's a | little strange. | nitsky wrote: | > Shouldn't the first adjective be something related to what | math users would value? | | "Beauty" is very important to mathematicians. Check out the | Wikipedia article on the subject: | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_beauty | zem wrote: | perhaps more relevant is how knuth literally took a decade | off from writing his books to write a better typesetting | system. | anon_tor_12345 wrote: | but not this kind of beauty. first sentence of the linked | wiki | | >Mathematical beauty is the aesthetic pleasure typically | derived from the abstractness, purity, simplicity, depth or | orderliness of _mathematics_. | | not of the type setting of mathematics (that's just regular | plain old aesthetical beauty). | nerdponx wrote: | The problem is hyperbole. "Handsome" or "highly-readable" would | be more apt. | wrycoder wrote: | Looking at the blog post on linear algebra, the line spacing | seems a bit jammed in the presence of the inlined math. | layer8 wrote: | Yeah, besides beauty being quite subjective, mentioning beauty | as the primary differentiator gives the impression that utility | is less of a focus. In today's environment where there's an | abundance of new software lacking depth and maturity, promoting | the "beauty" (whatever that is) of a product is more often an | indicator of just that. | abhinav22 wrote: | I think it is okay in this instance as it relates to an output | generator (and beautiful output should be a key functionality | of such a tool) | antihero wrote: | > What exactly makes Clayoven beautiful? | | It's written by a Ruby dev? :P | le-mark wrote: | Indeed, one does not see open source java projects self | promoting as "beautiful", nor many others languages (Python | jinga?). Reasonable to assert the Use/misuse of the adjective | based on that imo. | zeroonetwothree wrote: | The demo doesn't look particularly beautiful. Not that it's bad | but just not what I would think based on the marketing. | Ecco wrote: | I've been much happier using KaTeX over MathJax. Indeed KaTeX can | actually be rendered server-side. This prevents an ugly flash of | unstyled content on math-heavy pages. | artagnon wrote: | KaTeX doesn't do commutative diagrams, unfortunately. | singhrac wrote: | Have you tried MathJax 3? I found the render speed was the same | recently. | loloquwowndueo wrote: | Doesn't look very carefully crafted for something they claim to | be "beautiful". | | > There is no published gem. To get started, clone, run bundle to | install the required gems, and put bin/clayoven in $PATH. | | Yuck? Is it so difficult to package and publish a gem these days? | Did the author not find time to do so in the years they've been | working on this project? | | > To start writing, install vsclay for vscode, which will provide | the necessary syntax highlighting, IntelliSense support for | MathJaX, and trigger-[incremental build]-on-save functionality. | | What about integration with other editors? Will my "beautiful" | experience be ruined if I happen not to use vscode? | | Definitely looks like a very "scratching my own itch" kind of | project - worth sharing but the adjective used to present it | sounds like an overstatement. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-04 23:00 UTC)