Hi again :-), I forgot to mention about the Spec2 migration plans, so a (hopefully) short comment on that.
Last ESUG I talked with Guille and Esteban about combining Spec(1) and Spec2 in a single interface. The idea is to be able to embed Spec old widgets into Spec2, as they are progressively migrated. and now I'm needing Johan Fabry's Playground package[1] to embed playgrounds in the Grafoscopio notebooks. As the Spec2 migration completes and the rewriting is done, Grafoscopio 2.x series will be launched. [1] http://static.smalltalkhub.com/jfabry/Playground/ Any advice, bug reporting, bug fixing or comments on Grafoscopio are greatly appreciated. Cheers, Offray On 5/08/20 1:44 p. m., Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas wrote: > Hi, > > On 5/08/20 9:43 a. m., tbrunz wrote: >>>> Okay, I'll do that. But this brings up a more general question... >>>> >>>> If I wanted to add a diagram, or maybe a document with equations >>> (rendered >>>> in LaTex), then a class comment wouldn't work. >>>> >>>> ...Unless that's intended to be part of the newer format?? >>> Microdown supports latex via external services (I should check that the >>> implementation uses the same cache than the one for pictures). >>> For diagram you can use png but we will have to spot glitches. >> One more thought on this... I assume you've seen Jupyter Notebooks? >> They're starting to see some use where I work (we now have our own >> 'enterprise server'). I recently took an intro class to see how it works, >> and how to use them. >> >> How much of a "Jupyter-style" notebook capability would the community be >> interested in? By that I mean having the ability to mix 'rich' >> documentation with code and data to produce interactive 'notebooks' with >> similarities to what Jupyter does -- but simpler! Jupyter is much too >> complicated... > I can't speak for the wider community, but I think that there is some > interest as we have 3 Smalltalk interactive notebooks alternatives. Two > of them where mentioned as a long talks [1][2] in the last ESUG and > Grafoscopio was presented there also as a speed talk (someday I need to > make a proper ESUG long talk, but being self funded means that my > participation has been always confirmed in last moments). I share your > concern about Jupyter being overcomplicated and in fact I started > Grafoscopio in part out of my frustration with the incidental complexity > in the Python notebook ecosystem (see [3]). We can be more lean and agile. > > [1] > https://www.slideshare.net/esug/polyglot-notebooks-with-squeaksmalltalk-on-the-graalvm > [2] https://www.slideshare.net/esug/building-a-scientific-workbench-in-pharo > [3] > http://mutabit.com/offray/static/blog/output/posts/grafoscopio-idea-and-initial-progress.html > > One of the differences of Grafoscopio with other Smalltalk notebooks is > that is has an older diverse community (since 2015), beyond academia and > software developers, including activists, journalists, librarians, > philosophers, designers, among others. A key concern is to balance > practical choices in such communities with the PhD research that created > Grafoscopio (which was on Design and Creation with immersive community > research). For example a simple extensible format to exchange > Grafoscopio notebooks was an early concern and for that I used the > excellent STON format to mix documentation markup (Markdown) and Pharo > code. Also I bridged external tools (Pandoc, Lua) to make format > conversions (Markdown to LaTeX, HTML and PDF). The only other Smalltalk > notebook I know that has a notebook format is Documenter's[4] Xdoc, > which is a compressed folder mixing Pillar, JSON, txt and external files > referred in the Pillar document. Our approach for that composed > documents is to use Fossil [5], so such composed document or any > collection of documents in fact is just a self contained Fossil > repository, adding history, web interface and collaboration, while > keeping documents self contained and storage simple and portable. It's > aligned with ideas of SQLite as and application format[5a] and the > Panama Papers 2016 prototypes [6][6a] even predate the idea of Fossil as > a repository document[5b]. > > [4] https://gtoolkit.com/components/documenter/ > [5] https://fossil-scm.org/ > [5a] > https://www.pgcon.org/2014/schedule/attachments/319_PGCon2014OpeningKeynote.pdf > [6] https://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/panama-papers-1 > [6a] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/panama-papers/dir > [5b] https://fossil-scm.org/forum/forumpost/2ac0171524 > > What I want to point is that different approaches to rich interactive > documentation related with Pharo exist and they're exploring interesting > alternative spaces beyond what Jupyter has done, despite of lacking the > maturity, momentum and/or visibility behind Jupyter's. Scientific > Workbench, Documenter, or polyglot notebooks for sure are providing > valuable explorations and would be nice to be more aware of each others > work and approaches. > >> What you describe for enhanced comments sounds like a step in that >> direction... Obviously Pharo is already oriented toward mixing code and >> data in one document, and enhancing the comments moves it closer to a >> notebook with richer documentation possibilities. >> >> So it seems to me that generalizing this "enhanced document capability" and >> making it more prominent (such as giving it its own type of window, rather >> than it being a browser pane tied to the code?) would take it closer yet to >> realizing a general, flexible "Pharo Notebooks" concept. >> >> My understanding is that Offray's Grafoscopio is essentially what I'm >> describing, but maybe more oriented to data analysis & presentation..?? (He >> can say better than I, as I'm not sure how accurate that is.) I am thinking >> of something that would include that, but maybe be more general-purpose. > In Grafoscopio, interactive notebooks play an essential role with their > own window and usage metaphor (document as an interactive tree). When I > started, microdown was not in the radar and I would like explore further > integration with it, instead of relaying on (excellent) Pandoc for > format conversion. I have scripted Pandoc with Lua and is a pretty > powerful combination and an interesting language, but nothing beats the > Pharo's live coding experience and I would like to have that also for > document exporters and (pre)processors. I think that Grafoscopio is > already general concept-purpose enough. I wrote the Grafoscopio > manual[7] in Pharo. We have done other non-coding and visualization > documents on it, like porting the Data Journalism Handbook[8][8a] and > Data Feminism Book[9][9a] to our pocket infrastructures. > > [7] > https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/grafoscopio/uv/Docs/En/Books/Manual/manual.pdf > [8] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/mapeda/doc/tip/intro.md > [8a] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/mapeda/uv/mapeda.pdf > [9] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/datafem/ > [9a] https://mutabit.com/repos.fossil/datafem/uv > > That being said, Grafoscopio was the "first real app" I ever did. The > one that allowed me to go from scripting and formal modelling to > programming and development. Its development has been directed by > necessity and I have conceptual gaps and rookie code here and there. > Development has been improved as I learn more, and I have being > fortunate enough to have the attention and support from several > community members, from testing and installing, to answering newbie > questions, to my PhD internship, to bug reporting and even one offered > to pair program with me (but I was too newbie, non-native speaker and > shy to accept at that moment). Our last collaborator is Santiago > Bragragnolo and he has been working on some refactoring. > > August will be kind of busy for me until 21th, but I would gladly be > more involved with Grafoscopio after and meanwhile, retaking slowly some > workshops and solving bugs. > >> Part of this idea is to feature a "semi-automated" subset of Spec2 that >> makes it easier to get nice graphical UIs in a notebook fashion -- but does >> not require as much depth of understanding Spec2. (All of Spec2 allows >> anyone to build anything.. but not everyone needs to build so much..? This >> is the value of frameworks and selectable motifs, yes?) >> >> Could what I'm describing be a way for everyone to step easily into Spec2 >> when its full flexibility for making GUIs isn't needed (yet)? By this I'm >> implying code generators that create common/typical Spec2 framework classes >> & methods that would make up the front-end of the 'documentation' element of >> "Pharo Notebooks". Pharo being Pharo, one could then customize further... > My idea was to use a "self referential system" to explore the question > about "How can we change the digital artifacts that change us?", from > the perspective of a PhD in design and creation (not in computer > science). But the idea was to create/introduce a tool inside a community > (Grafoscopio) see how the community learn such tool and was able to > change it. Interactive notebooks was my bridge to approach Pharo to > non-coders. We are still far away of changing the tool itself, as Pharo > and Grafoscopio has been kind of behind scenes in the projects we do and > the more visible part has been documentation and a little bit of > scripting. But I hope that the Indie Web workshops talked in other > thread, make more visible the coding and scripting part so people can > use it to customize their web sites, then notebooks and, at some point > Grafoscopio or Pharo. The idea is to use interactive notebooks to > automatize and customize Pharo to user needs and make such learning a > bridge to customize Pharo. > >> Because "it's always easier to edit something than to create from a blank >> page", yes? >> >> I can see Pharo taking away "market share" from Jupyter Notebooks, by being >> simpler and easier to work with. Data + Code + Document: All three elements >> being "live" and interactive. Pharo has the first two.. What about the >> third? > You could check the "Data continuum environment: data <-> queries <-> > code <-> visuals <-> docs" of the Panama Papers blog post [10], that > points in the same direction. > > [10] https://mutabit.com/offray/blog/en/entry/panama-papers-1 > > Cheers, > > Offray > > > >
