I and many many others have been using org-mode for years for these sorts of things; specifically the easy LaTeX integration and code highlighting, but there’s a kitchen sink worth of goodies that the user base has added over the years.
Besides not requiring emacs, is there a value-add with Polymath? Or is this mostly scratching your own itches — which is a fine thing to do but a different one?
I actually haven't tried org-mode but I've been hearing about it for a while now. Can't comment.
> Besides not requiring emacs, is there a value-add with Polymath? Or is this mostly scratching your own itches — which is a fine thing to do but a different one?
I don't have a concise and perfect answer for this yet, as it is basically just a very early version of a personal project I've been itching to work on, but these are what I think I'd like to do:
- The vanilla implementation of Polymath as an SSG should be extremely easy to learn - even easier than doing a pure HTML (+CSS?) site. The reason why is because I see a lot of professors with really great content but their page is basically pure old HTML and looks absolutely awful on a modern computer or smartphone. I want something that supports 99% of the (static) features most people want right out of the box: video support, great typography and layout for all devices, interoperability with most of the other languages or formats they already use, and a very easy learning curve. It should basically be possible to have only a bunch of Polymath files and render to a beautiful static website without needing any other technical know-how.
- Super long term focus: I want to make this the right way now and then be able to use it for the rest of my life, so it will be done from a perspective outside of the status-quo technology, as in, I want to think about the best way to concisely format a specific kind of information, in a way that is easy to render out to any current or future format (PDF, HTML, LaTeX, ...) that way anybody who builds up a considerable base of Polymath files should have minimal friction in adopting future technologies and swapping their infrastructure.
- Support other kinds of pages and layouts, like for example https://jwmza.com/portfolio/switzerland
- Something maybe a bit crazy: I have this idea to read TeX or tables and automatically generate interactive graphs, which I think could be really useful for people who do a lot of STEM writing. Say you write {x f(x):x\mapsto x^2}, I'd like to automatically guess the relevant domain, codomain and bounds, and create a little interactive graph.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOT_(graph_description_languag...
In my example I was referring to the Cartesian plane graph of x vs. f(x), but I do certainly hope to support the kind of general graphs / directed graph structures you're referring to. If there are open source libraries to process those kinds of things, I may be able to hack MVP-type usability quicker than otherwise.
Unfortunately Polymath is a side project that only has a limited resource pool available at the moment, as I have other work responsibilities.
I'm considering the options available to me in finding some way to fund a dedicated long term development of Polymath. Maybe a paid hosting service for ready-to-go blogs or something like that, or a Patreon-type deal if it's better to just keep the whole thing open source. Very early in the project right now - definitely open to any suggestions on expanding it.