I'm finding the in-content markup and heavy in-stream visuals tremendously distracting.
A straight-text extract would be a far more useful presentation online. Following an @idlewords-type presentation, with images to the side of the main text would also help.
I have modest interest in reading this, but not so much that I'm willing to put up with entirely self-inflicted idiosyncracies to do so.
As mentioned elsewhere in this discussion, this is the markdown source for a presentation. A program called DeckSet turns it into a conventional presentation.
Having it in markdown enables some useful things like git/github.
Having it in markdown form should make outputting to a consumable Web format (HTML, ePub, PDF) possible.
I'm on a platform (Android) which doesn't have a Markdown translator readily available. Not even via Termux.
You're publishing, for the public. If you want to provide editorial sources, that's one matter. If you want to make consumption easy for your readers, that's another.
You've failed at it. And repeatedly defended that failure rather than remedied it.
The SpeakerDeck page includes a link to download it as a PDF.
And yet, someone discovered the source and decided to share that on HN. So be it. Any criticism you have to share with me is impersonal (I didn’t tell anyone to read the source), temporary, and obviously specific to this odd scenario.
FWIW, I’m chuffed, not chastised. It’s amazing to me that he source can be viewed with a web browser and is readable enough to be criticized. More apps should work this way.
So, I am not “defending” the format. I’m explaining it.
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p.s. To be precise, this is the source I published:
I'm not unaware of Ravenwald's reputation on HN. I've liked some of what he's done myself.
Part of the reason I'm making a bit of a stink about presentation is that 1) this is a technical site, technique is what we discuss, and 2) I'm aware of the tools and capabilities for doing this.
If you've got a system with the tools on it (my tablet, as noted, isn't one), then it is completely trivial to output a usable and useful format.
I do this fairly routinely myself, and on third party sources. E.g., a 1793 document, running 72 pages formatted, which apparently doesn't have a high-quality contemporary formatted version available: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/lhw2eq4qmnnwxijlcrfyba
On my desktop system, where it's supported (again, tablet, not), I've written 1800+ CSS stylesheets (most pretty similar and fairly simple), to fix annoyances with sites.
It's not that I can't fix this, if arsed enough to do something about it.
It's that deliberately fucking up presentations is hugely disrespectful to readers. It's why I try to take pains in what I write and style to not fuck shit up. Which is sometimes difficult (client systems are a complete and total shitstorm). But not falling over the low-hanging fruit such as providing mark-ed up rather than rendered text for readers helps a tad.
(And yes, I've ranted at blog editors, magazines, The New York Times, and Hacker News about various foul-ups.)
There's a greater irony, perhaps, in that my own psychological state is giving me a literal headache looking at Ravenwald's presentation here, given its topic. I really don't have the damned spoons for it.
A straight-text extract would be a far more useful presentation online. Following an @idlewords-type presentation, with images to the side of the main text would also help.
I have modest interest in reading this, but not so much that I'm willing to put up with entirely self-inflicted idiosyncracies to do so.