jandinter

I thought about it, but decided against pre-processing: The repo is meant to be an archive, and the XML spec can be looked up. If I were to introduce a new structure by pre-processing the files, I think that might be a plus for reading, but not for archiving. Whoever has a concrete use case (the "Digebu" website above looks great!), can write their own pre-processor for that use case.

I just want to archive the "official" XML files since the "official" website does not provide an archive. For that reason, I also don't change the XML files: The spec is available and everyone can build their own transform (to JSON, XML, whatever) based on their particular needs.

I maintain a repository with all German legal acts which is up to date:

https://github.com/jandinter/gesetze-im-internet

I scrape the official website (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de) once a week. The repository contains the "official" XML files with a formatting that is more focussed on presentation than on the logical structure of the legal acts, unfortunately (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/dtd/1.01/gii-norm.dtd).

Some time ago, someone from the digital service of Germany reached out and asked about my use case. Maybe there will be an official version of a "Git law" repo someday...

Thanks! I tried, but I have not yet found a way to make such guides unobtrusive. I will try out your suggestion. It is very motivating to see that people care about my little side project so much that they post a comment. So, thank you, made my day!

I built a website for box breathing: https://box-breathing.com

It is basically a timer for your breathing exercises, as the idea is that you inhale and exhale slowly, hold your breath in between, each step lasting 4 seconds.

I tried to make it as simple as possible, and to make it usable with old devices as well.

I built a tracker for German legal acts. I started in January 2022 and once a week, a GitHub Action downloads every published legal act: https://github.com/jandinter/gesetze-im-internet

Parsing the legal acts with the tools you mention looks very interesting! Currently, I simply collect the published XML files whose structure is optimized for laying out the text and not so much for representing a structure of sections and subsections.

I built this tool for my girl friend. A small nimble website to help you focus on breathing deep, like really deep:

Inhale for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold your breath for four seconds, and repeat...

Very simple. And yet, taking deep breaths helps you focus on your body and calms your mind. Try it out.

The website is very minimal on purpose – no tracking, no accounts, no newsletter banners, no tracking. Nevertheless, if you miss a feature, please leave a comment.

> “Git for everything“ would be a multi-billion dollar startup easily.

Worked on a “Git for Word” project [1], which is currently on hold.

The diff part was manageable, though not trivial to get diffs that make sense for prose/regular text.

The hard parts are UX/UI (making Git concepts transparent to “normal” users) and merging. Yet without automatic merging, branching is not very convenient.

Would love to collaborate on this in the future again. Reach out if you are working in this space, happy to share.

[1] https://julesdocs.com

> having a tree-sitter for legal code

This! I think this would enable so many services that make the legal system more approachable for many people.

This looks great! I share your sentiment: I looked into the XML files for the published German legal texts[1], and they seem to be made for display purposes only.

[1] Table of contents for XML files: https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/gii-toc.xml

Many available options seem to be based on manual annotation and, therefore, cover a limited range of all legal texts. Especially with regard to regulatory topics, those research sites usually fall short.

Looks neat!

I wish this was available for legal texts, making it easy to jump from one law to the referenced next legal provision. Many legal provisions, especially in very regulated areas, make use of “functions” “imported” from other, totally different laws.

Sorry for being off-topic, but if anyone knows a resource for that, I am super interested!

Nice overview by Matt from WordPress: https://ma.tt/2021/01/new-whitehouse-gov/

There you go, written by April herself: https://hackernoon.com/obviously-awesome-a-product-positioni...

+1!

I use Input for about two years and really like it. IMHO you need a high dpi/Retina display, though. I also like Output, a new font by Input‘s author, but haven‘t tried it yet. Might be a great fonts for usable interfaces

Highly recommended! I started with the Rails Tutorial as well and read The Well-Grounded Rubyist afterwards to get more in-depth with Ruby.

After that, I bought Bob Race‘s tutorial Build a Saas App with Rails which covers more practical aspects of building a multi-user SaaS app using well-known gems (instead of building everything by myself as in the Rails tutorial): https://leanpub.com/basair6

Working on it: https://julesdocs.com

It’s very hard though, because the files combine data and styling. Plus, the data is spread over several XML files.

If you want to message me: jan at the domain above

Edit: While Google Docs, Office365 and other collaborative editors are great for editing a document at the same time, from my point of view the real power of Git is branching, merging, and having a concept of distinct versions (which may consist of several files).

It is challenging, very much so, but it can can be done. I built a prototype for Word files based on Git (can also use the GitHub API, so making it work with the Dropbox API should be doable). I implemented sort of a blame function as well: Jump to the previous version of a paragraph with just one click.

As OP said, it took a lot of effort to get the UI ok. Probably takes even more effort to create a great UI, but I guess Dropbox has some resources, right? Shameless plug: Landing page at https://julesdocs.com

If anyone is interested in pushing this forward, I'd love to hear from you (mail address on the landing page)!

I went this way as well: Worked in big law, always enjoyed coding on the side, and went all in with coding to build an MVP for a document collaboration platform. It is an experience I wouldn't want to miss.

For anyone else who is thinking about switching careers, this is how I started: At some point during my career as a lawyer I started collecting ideas for a better, more effective way to work as a lawyer. Software could help a lot while doing many administrative tasks and would allow a lawyer to focus on what creates value - giving legal advice, thinking through tough legal problems, negotiating a great outcome for the client... Yet a lot of enterprise software is too hard to grasp, and many lawyers just stick with the old way, doing most things manually (by themselves or have it done by their assistants).

So I started building one MVP, pivoted and now am building a "GitHub for Word". Steep learning curve as a startup founder and well worth giving it a try. If you are interested, check out my project Jules: https://julesdocs.com