ntg-context - mailing list for ConTeXt users
 help / color / mirror / Atom feed
* [OT] Research into Generative Typesetting
@ 2011-07-23 13:14 John Haltiwanger
  2011-07-23 16:37 ` Christian
  0 siblings, 1 reply; 12+ messages in thread
From: John Haltiwanger @ 2011-07-23 13:14 UTC (permalink / raw)
  To: mailing list for ConTeXt users


[-- Attachment #1.1: Type: text/plain, Size: 4006 bytes --]

Hi everyone,

As some of you may know, in 2010 I attained a masters degree in New Media
from the University of Amsterdam. The title of my thesis is "Grammars of
Process: Agency, Collective Becoming, and the Organization of Software".

* [PDF](http://drippingdigital.com/gop/grammars_of_process.pdf)
* [TeX](http://drippingdigital.com/gop/grammars_of_process.tex)
* [HTML](http://drippingdigital.com/gop)
* [thesis-groomer.rb](
https://github.com/ab5tract/new_media/blob/master/thesis/infrastructure/thesis-groomer.rb),
in case you are interested in the glue.

Linked above are the PDF and HTML versions of the thesis, which attempts to
examine generative typesetting (ie, going from one input into multiple
outputs with various properties) through the lens of new media theory and
the 'transductive' cybernetics of Gilbert Simondon. The introduction is
particularly heavy with new media theory, but as the chapters progress I
think it becomes more readable for those unfamiliar with this discourse. The
'Operating Systems' chapter was quite fun to write and hopefully contains
some interesting history and reflections.

One of the things this list might be excited about is the typography itself.
I use many of Robert Bringhurst's suggestions, and I think the output is
much the better for his advice.[^1] The HTML version was never totally
finished (I'd prefer it to have JavaScript interaction and more Web-specific
functionality). In fact, I had quite some plans for it, but as the deadline
of the thesis approached, I necessarily poured my efforts more into content
than presentation, and where presentation was concerned I was much more
preoccupied with the Context version. All in all, I am happy with the thesis
but I also know that it could use some work. If you have any feedback,
please let me know.

[^1]: If anyone is interested, I'm thinking I might make a module that sets
up the environment according to these conventions.

Because I was concerned with both PDF and HTML output, I chose to work in
Markdown with Pandoc as my input format. Through the course of trying to
manage a generative workflow, I had to make some unfortunate concessions: on
the one hand, I had to process some of the input in order to get some basic
things I needed, such as a blockquote environment for Context, handling the
title page layout and abstract, among other things; and on the other hand I
was forced to avoid bibliographic automation and instead had to be very
careful to manually cite all my references. (This was because, at the time,
Pandoc did not have the any capacity to do citation management that would
work within HTML; with its new CiteProc support it seems that this is now
feasible). Tagged PDF support is out of the question due to Pandoc generally
only having MkII support, including lacking newer stuff like
\startchapter..\stopchapter and \hyphenatedURL.

The main conclusion I had about generative typesetting is that we are
missing a crucial "glue layer". I have written some on a system which I call
Subtext, a mutable translation layer where one is in control of both the
syntax and the translation effects from a configuration file. Pandoc is
great, but Subtext approaches the edge cases of generative typesetting
differently by encouraging output-specificities without requiring anyone to
learn Haskell to gain a little more control. Looking over Hans' new
`m-markdown` code, I am beginning to see a clearer vision of how to go about
implementing this.

I've done some presentations on generative typesetting:

* [Generative Typesetting @ Libre Graphics Meeting 2011](
http://river-valley.tv/generative-typesetting-with-context/)
* [Textual Liberation @ The Unbound Book Conference](
http://e-boekenstad.nl/unbound/index.php/john-haltiwanger-generative-typesetting/
)
    * [Sozi notes](
http://drippingdigital.com/conf/unbound-book/textual-liberation.svg)

Anyway, I thought that perhaps someone here might find some bit of this
interesting. Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,
John

[-- Attachment #1.2: Type: text/html, Size: 4711 bytes --]

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/plain, Size: 485 bytes --]

___________________________________________________________________________________
If your question is of interest to others as well, please add an entry to the Wiki!

maillist : ntg-context@ntg.nl / http://www.ntg.nl/mailman/listinfo/ntg-context
webpage  : http://www.pragma-ade.nl / http://tex.aanhet.net
archive  : http://foundry.supelec.fr/projects/contextrev/
wiki     : http://contextgarden.net
___________________________________________________________________________________

^ permalink raw reply	[flat|nested] 12+ messages in thread

end of thread, other threads:[~2011-07-30 18:22 UTC | newest]

Thread overview: 12+ messages (download: mbox.gz / follow: Atom feed)
-- links below jump to the message on this page --
2011-07-23 13:14 [OT] Research into Generative Typesetting John Haltiwanger
2011-07-23 16:37 ` Christian
2011-07-27 10:30   ` John Haltiwanger
2011-07-27 22:21     ` Aditya Mahajan
2011-07-28  8:18       ` Processing markdown (was: Research into Generative Typesetting) Wolfgang Schuster
2011-07-29 18:08         ` Aditya Mahajan
2011-07-29 20:38           ` Processing markdown Hans Hagen
2011-07-30  2:59             ` Aditya Mahajan
2011-07-30  7:37               ` Wolfgang Schuster
2011-07-30 14:03               ` Hans Hagen
2011-07-30 18:22                 ` Aditya Mahajan
2011-07-30 18:15               ` Aditya Mahajan

This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for NNTP newsgroup(s).