[HN Gopher] Show HN: Clayoven - beautiful website generator aime...
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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.
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(page generated 2021-04-04 23:00 UTC)