Promoting TreeBlood on /r/golang

[wjkoh]

Hi @Wyatt915 and @noClaps, Do you have a plan to write an introduction post to the /r/golang subreddit about TreeBlood and goldmark-treeblood? Many gophers search for new packages via Google, and often, /r/golang posts appear in the search results. It's a great way to promote a new package!

[noClaps]

I'm not a maintainer of Treeblood, nor do I have a Reddit account, but I do think this is a good idea. Treeblood is a pretty great library, and should definitely have more eyes on it!

[Wyatt915]

I think that's a great idea 😃

I'd like to do an overhaul of the readme, and then I think we can move forward with promoting it. I'll give myself a deadline of Saturday to make sure it actually happens. Maybe there are some other communities that would appreciate it as well (r/math comes to mind but I'd have to check their rules). I think the golang sub is the right first step.

Thanks to both of y'all for the support!!!

[noClaps]

Some documentation on how to use Treeblood would be quite helpful. I had to look at the test files to see examples of how to use it.

Also, this should probably be a discussion, not an issue. Discussions could also be a good place to share ideas about new features and changes to make to Treeblood, while keeping issues clear for bug reports and work-in-progress features.

[Wyatt915]

Discussions are now enabled!

[Wyatt915]

As promised, it is now Saturday. I fixed quite a few pesky little bugs and improved the readme. Do let me know if anything is unclear or unreadable. I'm fine with a reddit post at this point if @wjkoh would like to make one!

[wjkoh]

I'll draft a short one and share it here!

[noClaps]

There should probably be a changelog somewhere, whether in a CHANGELOG.md file or in Releases. I could probably just look at commit messages but they're not always clear with what the changes are and what they mean in effect, whereas a properly written changelog will provide those details.

Also there should maybe be releases for each new version rather than just tags, both for changelogs and for better visibility of when the latest release was made. GitHub also allows you to have notifications for new releases, but not for tags, and also shows new releases in the home page feed if you've starred the repo. Basically, it'll be clearer to someone following the repo when a new version has been released.

[Wyatt915]

Excellent points. I keep meaning to set up releases but I always get more distracted by other problems. I'll get that sorted today or tomorrow.

[wjkoh]

I've drafted a short post: https://gist.github.com/wjkoh/4878b0f9d1bf66b5bd8b0bfed4bbf5a2 Please feel free to change it or post it to Reddit! I'm not sure if the <math>...</math> element will render properly on Reddit, though. We may need to render it as an SVG or PNG file, or replace it with an external link to a rendered example.

[noClaps]

It doesn't seem like your <math> rendered properly on GitHub, so my guess is that it won't on Reddit either. I think if we're posting to a community of developers, it's better to show code and then output, so just wrap the <math>...<math> in code fences and post a screenshot from https://treeblood.org after. Maybe also include a link to the https://treeblood.org playground so that people can try it for themselves.

[Wyatt915]

For the first paragraph, I'd add something like

I'm excited to announce TreeBlood, the world's first pure-Go LaTeX to MathML renderer! If you're working with LLMs like ChatGPT or Gemini and need to display mathematical formulas generated in their responses, TreeBlood offers a fast, server-side solution. Whether you just want to publish mathematical expressions on your blog or create archival publications, TreeBlood can do both without the need for javascript or any external libraries

Something like that, anyway. I'll think of some better wording. I want to make sure it's clear that it's not only an LLM tool - mathematicians and math communicators can use it too and I don't want to scare them off!

I think this example is a nice one as it shows off the array environment, plain text, changing text size, some standard notation, and big operators with complicated limits. Downside is that it's a pretty long snippet of latex.

\begin{array}{c}
{\large \underline{\text{Generalized Product Rule:}}} \\
\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm d}{\mathrm dx} \left[\prod_{i=1}^k f_i(x)\right] = \sum_{j=1}^k\left(f^\prime_j(x)\prod_\substack{i=1\\ i\not=j}^kf_i(x)\right)
\end{array}

and here's a screenshot of the Sophomore's Dream (the example you used) as well: