commentary: getting started

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even getting started is harder than i thought.

i'm having trouble deciding what tools to use to present the notebook. i already started it as a blog here thinking i'd just write html as i go and post it at the end of each session.

but thinking a little more about it, i want more interaction, and i want it to integrate well within inferno.

i could write it in troff man macros, which would work well in inferno. but inferno doesn't support full troff and preprocessors eqn, tbl, and pic. i considered LaTeX; but this seems more appropriate for a final printable version of a report.

looking around on the web; the Mathematica Notebook is closer to what I had in mind. a interactive technical notebook. code can be run, graphics and sound presented and manipulated.

another similar concept is the Squeak environment. Workspaces can be saved and exported. These can present models, simulations, experiments with objects.

so what do we have in inferno. plumbing can drive the interactivity for the notebook. the notebook could be presented through wm/man and other files, objects, can be plumbed from there. the notebook file system could be exported for viewing.

we'll have to experiment as we go :)

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