3 ms·

Byrne's Euclid

50 points by layer8 5mo ago

gnabgib 5mo ago
(2018) At the time (79 points, 12 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697567 Earlier this year (97 points, 3 months ago, 23 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46867018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46867018
Refreeze5224 5mo ago
I took Euclidean geometry in high school, and having a book with colors like this would have made things so much easier to grasp. The color scheme is lovely too, and really makes me consider buying the poster. If you'd have told 15 year old me that I would one day really want a Euclid poster, I'd have called you insane!
- aag 5mo ago
  I have the poster on my wall. It's beautiful. I highly recommend it.
WillAdams 5mo ago
A higher tech version is: https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...
- conorbergin 5mo ago
  While less typographically interesting, this is a much clearer treatment of Elements.
  - WillAdams 5mo ago
    Surprisingly, it hasn't seem much discussion here AFAICT.
Topology1 5mo ago
Perhaps I'm alone on this, but I find all the different colors and diagrams distracting rather than helpful. It feels cluttered to me.
- rembicilious 5mo ago
  For me it iſ the old timey eſſ that iſ moſt diſracting.
  - dhosek 5mo ago
    Yeah, why bother updating the diagrams but then do long s throughout?
  - conorbergin 5mo ago
    I'm slightly baffled it existed in the first place, considering they also used the small s, and it looks almost exactly like the f. To be fair, I am equally confused that so many modern typefaces don't distinguish I and l.
    - zombot 5mo ago
      I ſuſpect the uſers of ye olde ſ were/are all liſping.
emmelaich 5mo ago
I'd rather see a normal s than the long s in the text. Seems unnecessary.
- jonlong 5mo ago
  Fwiw, you can use the "Modern English" language setting to banish the long s. Reproducing Byrne's original typography is a stated goal of the author. (You can certainly debate the value of that goal.)
PowerElectronix 5mo ago
If you like this, they completed the rest of the books in the style and published it in hardcover here https://www.kroneckerwallis.com/product/euclids-elements-completing-oliver-byrnes-work/ https://www.kroneckerwallis.com/product/euclids-elements-com...
adrian_b 5mo ago
I believe that the only useful form of the antique books, such as those originally written in Latin or Ancient Greek, is a bilingual edition, like those provided by the Loeb Library collection. For Euclid's Elements, there is this excellent and free bilingual edition due to Richard Fitzpatrick: https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/Books/Euclid/Euclid.html https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/Books/Euclid/Euclid.html The bilingual editions are useful even for people who do not know and do not intend to learn the original language, because they still allow them to discover which were the original meanings of many old words that are still in use today and to investigate the real meaning of certain paragraphs of interest, where an English translation may be unable to provide the correct meaning, without a very long commentary about the context. Moreover, in the case of books like those of Euclid, an non-specialist translator, i.e. a non-mathematician, will frequently make mistakes that can be discovered by a specialist, i.e. mathematician, who can compare the original and the translated text, even when the specialist has only little knowledge about the ancient language. From Euclid's Elements, I consider that there are 2 sections that have retained most of their importance until today, and which are the most instructive: the 2 sections with definitions, the first with the definitions used in plane geometry (in Book 1) and the second with the definitions used in solid geometry (a.k.a. stereometry) (in Book 11). An important part of the mathematical language still used today has its origin in these 2 sections of definitions. There are also other 2 sections with definitions, about numbers (i.e. natural numbers) and about magnitudes (i.e. non-negative real numbers), which however have been less preserved in the modern terminology.
- WillAdams 5mo ago
  One amazing implementation of that sort of thing was the "Leonardo" CD-ROM presentation of the Codex Leceister: https://mostre.museogalileo.it/codiceleicester/en/introduction https://mostre.museogalileo.it/codiceleicester/en/introducti... https://en.softonic.com/articles/bill-gates-bought-a-da-vinci-manuscript-for-30-million-this-is-what-he-did-with-it https://en.softonic.com/articles/bill-gates-bought-a-da-vinc... I really wish that there were more examples of that sort of thing. Other books which push the boundaries on technological presentation: - https://www.motionmountain.net/ https://www.motionmountain.net/ - _The Elements by Theodore Gray_ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/id364147847 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/... One might argue that _Myst_, or at least its predecessor _The Manhole_ (billed as "Where Alice would have gone if Alice had had HyperCard") also merits mention.

50 points by layer8 5mo ago

(2018) At the time (79 points, 12 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697567 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697567 Earlier this year (97 points, 3 months ago, 23 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46867018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46867018

Refreeze5224 5mo ago

I took Euclidean geometry in high school, and having a book with colors like this would have made things so much easier to grasp. The color scheme is lovely too, and really makes me consider buying the poster. If you'd have told 15 year old me that I would one day really want a Euclid poster, I'd have called you insane!

aag 5mo ago
I have the poster on my wall. It's beautiful. I highly recommend it.

WillAdams 5mo ago

A higher tech version is: https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.htm...

conorbergin 5mo ago
While less typographically interesting, this is a much clearer treatment of Elements.
- WillAdams 5mo ago
  Surprisingly, it hasn't seem much discussion here AFAICT.

Topology1 5mo ago

Perhaps I'm alone on this, but I find all the different colors and diagrams distracting rather than helpful. It feels cluttered to me.

rembicilious 5mo ago
For me it iſ the old timey eſſ that iſ moſt diſracting.
- dhosek 5mo ago
  Yeah, why bother updating the diagrams but then do long s throughout?
- conorbergin 5mo ago
  I'm slightly baffled it existed in the first place, considering they also used the small s, and it looks almost exactly like the f. To be fair, I am equally confused that so many modern typefaces don't distinguish I and l.
  - zombot 5mo ago
    I ſuſpect the uſers of ye olde ſ were/are all liſping.

emmelaich 5mo ago

I'd rather see a normal s than the long s in the text. Seems unnecessary.

jonlong 5mo ago
Fwiw, you can use the "Modern English" language setting to banish the long s. Reproducing Byrne's original typography is a stated goal of the author. (You can certainly debate the value of that goal.)

PowerElectronix 5mo ago

If you like this, they completed the rest of the books in the style and published it in hardcover here https://www.kroneckerwallis.com/product/euclids-elements-completing-oliver-byrnes-work/ https://www.kroneckerwallis.com/product/euclids-elements-com...

adrian_b 5mo ago

I believe that the only useful form of the antique books, such as those originally written in Latin or Ancient Greek, is a bilingual edition, like those provided by the Loeb Library collection. For Euclid's Elements, there is this excellent and free bilingual edition due to Richard Fitzpatrick: https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/Books/Euclid/Euclid.html https://farside.ph.utexas.edu/Books/Euclid/Euclid.html The bilingual editions are useful even for people who do not know and do not intend to learn the original language, because they still allow them to discover which were the original meanings of many old words that are still in use today and to investigate the real meaning of certain paragraphs of interest, where an English translation may be unable to provide the correct meaning, without a very long commentary about the context. Moreover, in the case of books like those of Euclid, an non-specialist translator, i.e. a non-mathematician, will frequently make mistakes that can be discovered by a specialist, i.e. mathematician, who can compare the original and the translated text, even when the specialist has only little knowledge about the ancient language. From Euclid's Elements, I consider that there are 2 sections that have retained most of their importance until today, and which are the most instructive: the 2 sections with definitions, the first with the definitions used in plane geometry (in Book 1) and the second with the definitions used in solid geometry (a.k.a. stereometry) (in Book 11). An important part of the mathematical language still used today has its origin in these 2 sections of definitions. There are also other 2 sections with definitions, about numbers (i.e. natural numbers) and about magnitudes (i.e. non-negative real numbers), which however have been less preserved in the modern terminology.

WillAdams 5mo ago
One amazing implementation of that sort of thing was the "Leonardo" CD-ROM presentation of the Codex Leceister: https://mostre.museogalileo.it/codiceleicester/en/introduction https://mostre.museogalileo.it/codiceleicester/en/introducti... https://en.softonic.com/articles/bill-gates-bought-a-da-vinci-manuscript-for-30-million-this-is-what-he-did-with-it https://en.softonic.com/articles/bill-gates-bought-a-da-vinc... I really wish that there were more examples of that sort of thing. Other books which push the boundaries on technological presentation: - https://www.motionmountain.net/ https://www.motionmountain.net/ - _The Elements by Theodore Gray_ https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/id364147847 https://apps.apple.com/us/app/the-elements-by-theodore-gray/... One might argue that _Myst_, or at least its predecessor _The Manhole_ (billed as "Where Alice would have gone if Alice had had HyperCard") also merits mention.