[wcrichton]

"Sophisticated markup language with embedded JavaScript" is a fine model of Nota. You can also think about it as another syntax for a React program, like an alternative to JSX that's oriented at writing documents (prose-first) rather than writing websites (code-first).

The complexity of Javascript and React gives you two main benefits:

1. You can use Javascript as a metalanguage to manipulate the document, e.g. to make and reference variables, perform computations, and so on.

2. You can use React to provide semantic structure and interactivity to your document, e.g. to mark definitions of vocabulary and link references back to the definition.

Nota consists of a syntax, a compiler that goes from Nota document to React program, and a set of React components that are commonly used in Nota documents. You could integrate it into a website or CMS, but it is not inherently any kind of information management system.

[wolverine876]

Thank you. Would Jupyter be a good comparision (though that isn't prose-oriented)? Maybe even Emacs? What users are you targeting? Developers usually don't need to write a lot of prose.

I'm always interested in systems that are willing to make the tradeoff of more power and sophistication at the cost of a greater learning curve, and I strongly agree that we need something beyond PDFs and webpages (and Word documents). Nota interests me but I'm having a hard time seeing how the power and sophistication will significantly improve my writing or documents (and I don't develop React applications). A use case would be great; the hyperlinks and tooltips on the page I see can be done much more simply.

[wcrichton]

I'm targeting people who are writing documents: bloggers, academics, textbook writers, that sort of thing. Certainly Nota requires a level of technical expertise to use right now, but I have a WYSIWYG editor as a distant-future TODO.

If you read my original paper about Nota, you can find a more interesting set of applications: https://willcrichton.net/nota/

[wolverine876]

Ah, thank you. That paper makes a lot more sense to me, describing a clear problem. For others:

The principal question underlying this work is: how much effort does it take to understand a PL paper?

and

Papers about programming languages involve complex notations, systems, and proofs. Static PDFs offer little support in understanding such concepts. I describe Nota, a framework for academic papers that uses the browser's interactive capabilities to support comprehension in context. Nota uses hover effects, tooltips, expandable sections, toggleable explanations, and other interactions to help readers understand a language's syntax and semantics.