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The manual seems to quickly disqualify the system. The numbers don't line up in the TOC in horrible ways. Then a little ways down there's a wrap figure that's g

by twarge 7y ago

The manual seems to quickly disqualify the system. The numbers don't line up in the TOC in horrible ways. Then a little ways down there's a wrap figure that's got a horrible spacing problem. These indicate to me that the shiny new foundations are really quite wobbly.

crazygringo 7y ago
Wow, I thought you were exaggerating but it really is terrible. Page 15 of the manual is inexplicably 90% blank too. So it's clearly just a super-rough prototype, which would be fine except that when it brands itself as "its job is to produce beautiful printed documents"... it gives the impression that it already does this, when the reality is clearly far, far away. I think the project needs to be honest about where it's at. [1] https://sile-typesetter.org/manual/sile-0.10.2.pdf https://sile-typesetter.org/manual/sile-0.10.2.pdf
- bjornjajajaja 7y ago
  Well it doesn’t even have a 1.0 release so that’s enough to cut them slack. For instance, the foundation of the house is most critical but when everyone looks at the foundation and asks, “where’s the house? This house can’t be much they brand themselves as a beautiful château but all it is is a big hole in the ground...” A project like this is no minor task! :)
  - twarge 7y ago
    The very first versions of TeX did fewer things, but they did them really perfectly.
  - marcinzm 7y ago
    >Well it doesn’t even have a 1.0 release so that’s enough to cut them slack. I mean, it's at 3000+ commits and 5+ years so it's not exactly a new project. There's something to be said for doing fewer things but doing them really well.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paulclinger 7y ago
It's an open source project that will gladly accept patches. I've submitted patches for those things that didn't work for me and while getting feedback is useful, getting fixes is better.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  The feedback here isn't for the project really, it's for everyone else thinking of using it. Hacker News is a discussion site and not just a place to market things.
haberman 7y ago
I love the premise and design vision of SILE, so I played with it a bit. I reported an issue with the show-off document (not the manual), and it led to an interesting discussion: https://github.com/sile-typesetter/sile/issues/623 https://github.com/sile-typesetter/sile/issues/623

by twarge 7y ago

crazygringo 7y ago

Wow, I thought you were exaggerating but it really is terrible. Page 15 of the manual is inexplicably 90% blank too. So it's clearly just a super-rough prototype, which would be fine except that when it brands itself as "its job is to produce beautiful printed documents"... it gives the impression that it already does this, when the reality is clearly far, far away. I think the project needs to be honest about where it's at. [1] https://sile-typesetter.org/manual/sile-0.10.2.pdf https://sile-typesetter.org/manual/sile-0.10.2.pdf

bjornjajajaja 7y ago
Well it doesn’t even have a 1.0 release so that’s enough to cut them slack. For instance, the foundation of the house is most critical but when everyone looks at the foundation and asks, “where’s the house? This house can’t be much they brand themselves as a beautiful château but all it is is a big hole in the ground...” A project like this is no minor task! :)
- twarge 7y ago
  The very first versions of TeX did fewer things, but they did them really perfectly.
- marcinzm 7y ago
  >Well it doesn’t even have a 1.0 release so that’s enough to cut them slack. I mean, it's at 3000+ commits and 5+ years so it's not exactly a new project. There's something to be said for doing fewer things but doing them really well.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paulclinger 7y ago

It's an open source project that will gladly accept patches. I've submitted patches for those things that didn't work for me and while getting feedback is useful, getting fixes is better.

marcinzm 7y ago
The feedback here isn't for the project really, it's for everyone else thinking of using it. Hacker News is a discussion site and not just a place to market things.

haberman 7y ago

I love the premise and design vision of SILE, so I played with it a bit. I reported an issue with the show-off document (not the manual), and it led to an interesting discussion: https://github.com/sile-typesetter/sile/issues/623 https://github.com/sile-typesetter/sile/issues/623