CindyJS: A framework for interactive mathematical content on the web | Hacker News Reader

CindyJS: A framework for interactive mathematical content on the web

cindyjs.org

198 pointsOmarShehata13 comments

Thank you for sharing this, I am generally interested in any tool that makes the creation of explorable explanations easier.

However, while I am passably competent as an educator/physicist/js dev, I have a hard time understanding what the use case for this library is. Is it a plotting library mainly? A plotting library with latex built in? An ODE solver? An UI-building toolkit? The showcase gallery does not make that clear and it is pretty difficult to find example snippets that go to the core of the library and how its creator imagines it being used. Could you elaborate on why I should use this instead of vanilla javascript + my favorite UI library + my favorite canvas library?

Edit: these slides seem to cover some of my questions.

I write tutorials - they're mainly CG related but they get a bit mathsy at times. I'd love to use this library to create interactive figures. It would be overkill for my use case, but if my writing was just a little bit more math focused I'd be all over this.

For those trying to contextualize this, CindyJS is based on Cinderella, a geometry framework developed by Jürgen Richter-Gebert. He also wrote a book called "Perspectives on Projective Geometry" where he goes into full detail about the mathematics behind this framework.

I had previously created a hackernews thread about this (amazing) book, to see if anyone wanted to do a reading group with me on it, but didn't get many takers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23371641

Thanks for this link. I wasn't aware of the book, but this "theoretical background" page on the Cinderella website made a big impression on me years ago. Maybe it would work as a taster for your proposed group. https://doc.cinderella.de/tiki-index.php?page=Theoretical+Ba...

> Jürgen Richter-Gebert

Ah, that explains the "Adminfiles Zugefügt" commit

https://github.com/CindyJS/CindyJS/commit/2ccb3e07b0bde04777...

This is so good, the Escher & Droste effect sample is one of my favorite : https://cindyjs.org/gallery/main/Droste/

Kleinian fractals is super fun to play with:

https://cindyjs.org/gallery/main/Kleinian/

It is! I'm having a blast with the optics simulation:

https://cindyjs.org/gallery/main/Optics/

You should try Algodoo with the lasers and optics. It's free now. It is a 2d physics sandbox with a great GUI.

Excited to try it! Thanks!

This looks very cool. I'm gonna be using this soon!

I am curious why you'd create a new scripting language for this, how is JS limiting for building these visualizations?

It grew out of Cinderella, which released its first commercial version in 1998, so JavaScript was only around a few years, and did not have the potential it does today. I found Cinderella about 5 years ago, and I like the way CindyJS has evolved for geometry and math needs.

Beautiful

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