[HN Gopher] Forscape - A Language and Editor for Scientific Comp...
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       Forscape - A Language and Editor for Scientific Computation
        
       Author : faresahmed
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2024-10-15 10:14 UTC (12 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | auggierose wrote:
       | Insane. This must have been so much work, and it looks great, but
       | I know I will never use it.
        
       | WillAdams wrote:
       | Why this rather than LyX, Texmacs, Jupyter Notebook, LaTeX (and a
       | suitable editor), or Typst (and a suitable editor)?
        
         | Onavo wrote:
         | If you asking this, you are the wrong audience. All academic
         | journals accept submissions in Microsoft Word, this is a
         | similar tool targeted at the WYSIWYG crowd.
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | you both are missing the main point here, Forscape is not for
           | writing documents, but for writing executable code.
        
             | wdkrnls wrote:
             | TeXmacs can execute code too. Honestly, if it had 1/10 the
             | community of Emacs, I would be using it for everything from
             | running my window manager to driving my statistical
             | simulations. It's already what Stallman keeps asking Emacs
             | to become.
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | Code typography is such a neglected area, I'm glad to see any
       | projects that touch on that. This reminds me of Suns Fortress
       | language, which was designed also for scientific computing (afaik
       | more in HPC sense), and also allowed rendering code into pdf with
       | improved typography. Unfortunately lot of the original Fortress
       | resources have linkrotted away, but there are some examples in
       | this presentation (by Guy Steele!)
       | https://www.cs.tufts.edu/comp/150FP/archive/neal-glew/mcrt/F...
        
         | WillAdams wrote:
         | Arguably the most successful effort in this space is:
         | 
         | http://literateprogramming.com/
         | 
         | I use it in a current project using LaTeX:
         | 
         | https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview
        
           | zokier wrote:
           | I checked the linked PDF[1] as an example, and the codeblocks
           | are still just basic plain monospaced blocks with practically
           | no typesetting done to them; very different from something
           | like Fortress, or indeed this Forscape
           | 
           | [1] https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview/blob/main/gcode
           | pre...
        
       | xelxebar wrote:
       | This is super cool! Recently, I've been musing about the
       | potential ergonomics of programming directly with rich
       | typography, and here Forscape's kind of gone and done it.
       | 
       | The project seems to be specifically targeting working
       | scientists, but I think there's real potential for using
       | mathematical and math-like notation in a general programming
       | language. The array language family does adopt a few of the
       | affordances from math, and even that partial pick-up gives them
       | some ergonomic features not seen elsewhere.
       | 
       | At the moment, we're kind of stuck in the paradigm of linear
       | input, only using very limited typography for somewhat dumb
       | syntax highlighting. Math-like notation is really nice at
       | conveying semantics and intent in ways that are really
       | challenging in current languages. For example, sub- and
       | superscripts effectively act as function parameters but give
       | extra freedom for conveying the different meaning and use of said
       | parameters. Things like Haskell's generic infix syntax, named
       | parameters, optional arguments, etc. can be seen as ways of
       | trying to work around current limitations.
       | 
       | The biggest question for me is input, which Forscape seems to
       | address quite nicely. We don't just want to typeset our code
       | prettily, we want to have all the affordances of advanced
       | typography directly available _as we code_.
       | 
       | I'd love to hear user stories from Forscape: Do you like the
       | mouse-oriented editor experience or do you prefer keyboard
       | shortcuts? What is easiest for you to express in Forscape the
       | language? What is most challenging? Where does the system diverge
       | most from the natural expression? For those with a programming or
       | CS background, how easy is it to reason about memory access and
       | execution? Etc.
       | 
       | Thanks for sharing!
        
         | cobbal wrote:
         | Mathematica also has some fairly advanced typographic syntax.
         | Matrices, subscripts, integral signs, with a decent input
         | system to match. Type <ESC>dint<ESC> to get a definite integral
         | with placeholders.
         | 
         | One particularly nice thing about it is that it's completely
         | optional sugar over a lispy "FullForm" syntax, and it's easy to
         | convert between the two.
         | 
         | I'd encourage everyone to play with it, but it's sadly non-
         | free.
        
       | Kye wrote:
       | Is the name a play on Farscape, or is that coincidence?
        
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       (page generated 2024-10-15 23:00 UTC)