5 ms·

Idyll: Interactive Document Language

195 points by abhirag 9y ago

awake 9y ago
This was previously posted about a month ago
mathisonian 9y ago
Hey HN - I'm the creator of Idyll, it is really cool to see it here! To respond to the other comment - I did post it a few months ago but it didn't get much traction then. Happy to answer any questions about the project, or why you would want to use something like this.
- abhirag 9y ago
  Thanks for making this :) As of now I just export Jupyter Notebooks to html, throw them on my site and call it a day but have been meaning to try Idyll for some data visualization.
  - rmbeard 9y ago
    Presumably you can switch between idyll and Jupiter notebooks using note down and nbconvert with a bit of extra work.
    - abhirag 9y ago
      Well, I have already put some extra work in making jupyter notebooks look good when exported as html (for example - http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html). I am planning to use Idyll for d3 plots and such, but thanks for the idea, exporting to markdown and then using Idyll was something I hadn't thought about.
      - rmbeard 9y ago
        Nice notebook more railways around the world should be using notebooks.
- arve0 9y ago
  Hi! I'm thinking about using this for creating tests in school. How would one send state to a backend? Use refs?
  - mathisonian 9y ago
    In that case you'd want to make a component that would post the state to the backend. You can use Idyll's variables to pass the state to the component that sends the request. For example, here is a page that uses firebase to persist state https://mathisonian.github.io/idyll/firebase/ https://mathisonian.github.io/idyll/firebase/. The custom components for that page are here https://github.com/mathisonian/idyll/tree/master/firebase/components https://github.com/mathisonian/idyll/tree/master/firebase/co...
mimg 9y ago
A somewhat similar in concept using attributes in markup is Tangle [1] [1] http://worrydream.com/Tangle/ http://worrydream.com/Tangle/
shalabhc 9y ago
See also http://aprt.us http://aprt.us as an interesting way to build interactive diagrams.
rmbeard 9y ago
This looks very cool. Thinking of using it for my lecture notes. I like the math support and that it seems to support d3 albeit with a bit of extra work, am wondering how easy it would be to bulk convert from another format say. LaTeX using something like Pandoc to markdown and then to idyll? Would rather not cut and paste everything.
- gcb0 9y ago
  on the other hand, it seems too gimmicky and too focused on their favorite scrollable interactions
  - rmbeard 9y ago
    Still early days is my impression. It is extendable which is a plus. I think it goes in the rightirection and can see myself using it. Which is not something that happens that often.
- mathisonian 9y ago
  Thanks rmbeard. We don't have any specific importing tools, but a markdown converter should get you most of the way there. Happy to discuss further if you do end up wanting to use it.
garyclarke27 9y ago
Looks cool, would be a lot more interesting to me, if it included data io with postgres database functions and views. I never use direct to table updates. Being able to easily created a web front end to a database with a tool like yours, would be extremely useful to me and I would happily pay for such. There are umpteen tools for creating schemas and managing databases - most like PgAdmin are pretty poor - I use Sublime Text. Unfortunately there are no RAD tools available for creating simple UI's. All my logic is in the db so I just need simple forms and display grids. I had a quick look at Envelope but complexity of setup and poor documentation put me off.
- vladsanchez 9y ago
  I feel your pain. Don't despair. I once found a tool you'll also fall in love with: Delphi [1]. If you look for a, less-featured, FOSS version, try Lazarus [2] [1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi [2] http://www.lazarus-ide.org http://www.lazarus-ide.org
- mathisonian 9y ago
  We are in the process of adding compile time logic, which will hopefully enable more use cases like this. (so you could e.g. run a database query at compile time and use that to populate the page). happy to ping you once this is landed, or you can follow the progress here https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll/issues/70 https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll/issues/70
  - mathisonian 9y ago
    In the meantime we support browserify plugins, so you could actually accomplish something like you're talking about today by using a plugin like https://github.com/mathisonian/dbify https://github.com/mathisonian/dbify

195 points by abhirag 9y ago

This was previously posted about a month ago

Hey HN - I'm the creator of Idyll, it is really cool to see it here! To respond to the other comment - I did post it a few months ago but it didn't get much traction then. Happy to answer any questions about the project, or why you would want to use something like this.

abhirag 9y ago
Thanks for making this :) As of now I just export Jupyter Notebooks to html, throw them on my site and call it a day but have been meaning to try Idyll for some data visualization.
- rmbeard 9y ago
  Presumably you can switch between idyll and Jupiter notebooks using note down and nbconvert with a bit of extra work.
  - abhirag 9y ago
    Well, I have already put some extra work in making jupyter notebooks look good when exported as html (for example - http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html http://abhirag.in/articles/train_of_thought_1.html). I am planning to use Idyll for d3 plots and such, but thanks for the idea, exporting to markdown and then using Idyll was something I hadn't thought about.
    - rmbeard 9y ago
      Nice notebook more railways around the world should be using notebooks.
arve0 9y ago
Hi! I'm thinking about using this for creating tests in school. How would one send state to a backend? Use refs?
- mathisonian 9y ago
  In that case you'd want to make a component that would post the state to the backend. You can use Idyll's variables to pass the state to the component that sends the request. For example, here is a page that uses firebase to persist state https://mathisonian.github.io/idyll/firebase/ https://mathisonian.github.io/idyll/firebase/. The custom components for that page are here https://github.com/mathisonian/idyll/tree/master/firebase/components https://github.com/mathisonian/idyll/tree/master/firebase/co...

mimg 9y ago

A somewhat similar in concept using attributes in markup is Tangle [1] [1] http://worrydream.com/Tangle/ http://worrydream.com/Tangle/

shalabhc 9y ago

See also http://aprt.us http://aprt.us as an interesting way to build interactive diagrams.

rmbeard 9y ago

This looks very cool. Thinking of using it for my lecture notes. I like the math support and that it seems to support d3 albeit with a bit of extra work, am wondering how easy it would be to bulk convert from another format say. LaTeX using something like Pandoc to markdown and then to idyll? Would rather not cut and paste everything.

gcb0 9y ago
on the other hand, it seems too gimmicky and too focused on their favorite scrollable interactions
- rmbeard 9y ago
  Still early days is my impression. It is extendable which is a plus. I think it goes in the rightirection and can see myself using it. Which is not something that happens that often.
mathisonian 9y ago
Thanks rmbeard. We don't have any specific importing tools, but a markdown converter should get you most of the way there. Happy to discuss further if you do end up wanting to use it.

garyclarke27 9y ago

Looks cool, would be a lot more interesting to me, if it included data io with postgres database functions and views. I never use direct to table updates. Being able to easily created a web front end to a database with a tool like yours, would be extremely useful to me and I would happily pay for such. There are umpteen tools for creating schemas and managing databases - most like PgAdmin are pretty poor - I use Sublime Text. Unfortunately there are no RAD tools available for creating simple UI's. All my logic is in the db so I just need simple forms and display grids. I had a quick look at Envelope but complexity of setup and poor documentation put me off.

vladsanchez 9y ago
I feel your pain. Don't despair. I once found a tool you'll also fall in love with: Delphi [1]. If you look for a, less-featured, FOSS version, try Lazarus [2] [1] https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi [2] http://www.lazarus-ide.org http://www.lazarus-ide.org
mathisonian 9y ago
We are in the process of adding compile time logic, which will hopefully enable more use cases like this. (so you could e.g. run a database query at compile time and use that to populate the page). happy to ping you once this is landed, or you can follow the progress here https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll/issues/70 https://github.com/idyll-lang/idyll/issues/70
- mathisonian 9y ago
  In the meantime we support browserify plugins, so you could actually accomplish something like you're talking about today by using a plugin like https://github.com/mathisonian/dbify https://github.com/mathisonian/dbify