218 pointsby nanna10 hours ago23 comments
  • lkm06 hours ago
    In the same vein, a few years ago, somebody implemented procedural decorations for a recreation of Byrne's "Elements of Euclid" in LaTeX: https://github.com/jemmybutton/byrne-euclid

    (bottom of the readme)

  • watersban hour ago
    I've recently spent some time staring at the contents of the MacTeX Distribution.

    https://tug.org/mactex/

    Which is how I discovered Toby Thruston's classic, "Drawing with MetaPost".

    https://github.com/thruston/Drawing-with-Metapost

    Procedural drawing with Lua is lovely. MetaPost provides another drawing language that might be considered more TeX-like.

    I'm not sure. I tend to be humbled by the TeX community. Inspired.

  • scott_codie5 hours ago
    In the reddit post, it is clear the person who came up with this didn't want it to be copied. I feel sad for that person.
    • bluerooibos4 hours ago
      > The creator prefers to keep the source closed to avoid code critiques

      That doesn't sound like someone who doesn't want their idea copied.

    • anamexis4 hours ago
      Why? I'm sure basically any closed product would prefer that there were no open source copies, but why feel sad for them?
  • archermarks7 hours ago
    Gorgeous but the AI text is so grating.
    • artursapek5 hours ago
      It's so recognizable lol. All the staccato.
  • bluerooibos4 hours ago
    Nice! I do slightly prefer the implementation/style in the Reddit post - do you have any plans to try and recreate that more closely or add multiple style options to it? Neat either way.
  • bonzini8 hours ago
    Readme is AI. :/
    • Thomashuet6 hours ago
      Not just the README, all of it. The author gives more details about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LaTeX/comments/1xixznw/comment/19rv...
      • bonzini4 hours ago
        I don't mind that as much. Scratching an itch with AI is fine, but if you want to publish it to the world I sort of expect some effort to show why you did that and why I should care.
    • forgetfulness7 hours ago
      This would have hit harder ten years ago, TeX ornamentation was a beautiful craft in all senses of the word.

      This is still pretty neat, but it's just not the same as carrying the tradition of Donald Knuth.

  • whimsicalism8 hours ago
    I think the phrase 'florilegium' must be an AI basin of sorts as I've had it suggested by AI as a name for a few projects of my own.
    • jihadjihad8 hours ago
      It's basically a Latin version of the Greek anthology [0], but far less commonly used. I'd imagine it occupies similar territory to anthology in high-dimensional space, though, so seems reasonable for an LLM to pick it up.

      0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anthology

      • ggsp7 hours ago
        I had no clue about anthology’s etymology. Very cool!
  • ClaraForm7 hours ago
    This is beautiful, thank you!

    I just asked Deepseek 4.1 Flash to convert it to an Obsidian extension that uses the file-name as the seed, and the result [1] is exactly something I've been dreaming of for so many years while I take daily notes.

    [1] imagepaste.org/i/8zu627ud.png

  • paaloeye4 hours ago
    This one is a stunner! Now I'm thinking about the next level: define a number of classes of procedurally generated patterns and let LLM decide overall sentiment relevance per page and make it somewhat logical across the document.

    Rebuild the document a few times, change the temperature, and choose the best.

  • nico8 hours ago
    Very impressed with both the cool idea and visuals, as well as the technical details. Had no idea you could do animations in Latex/PDF. So beautiful! Thank you for sharing
  • skyberrys6 hours ago
    I love it!!! I've tried years ago to make something like this, it didn't work out. But it makes me so happy to see that you did it! Great job!
  • vessenes5 hours ago
    Nice. I like that different print runs will have different procedurally generated flowers; nice touch.
  • coreyp_18 hours ago
    Quite beautiful.
  • james_marks7 hours ago
    This is beautiful, thank you!
  • b19n8 hours ago
    There are (many) times lately where I have become completely disillusioned with software, despise it at work and at home. But then I see something beautiful like this and feel marginally better.
  • Avicebron8 hours ago
    Definitely taking a closer look at this after work, awesome job.
  • bbor5 hours ago
    Am I miffed that something I've tried multiple times with the latest models has been accomplished here so beautifully, and in LUA (!!!) nonetheless? A little! But it's worth it to know that it is indeed possible...

    Great work. I doubt you care, but try not to get caught up in the idea that you might have violated someones god-given property rights by making pretty flowers for fun in the margins of PDFs.

  • fch427 hours ago
    This is beautiful - thanks for sharing.
  • aanet7 hours ago
    This is so pretty. Thanks for sharing.
  • RGS18117 hours ago
    This is gorgeous! Great idea!
  • WesolyKubeczek4 hours ago
    I don't care that it's vibecoded, it's beautiful.
  • LeTeutz8 hours ago
    YES THIS IS WHAT I NEED
  • ligarota6 hours ago
    Now do it in Typst.

    Edit: sad that is AI. And that explains why it's in LaTeX

    • fiforpg6 hours ago
      If not for AI, the project would have remained where it was born: in the author's head.

      I do understand your sentiment, of course.

    • forgotpwd162 hours ago
      It's LaTeX because the reddit post, inquiring on how to do this and which sparked author to make this project and into which author shared it, was made in the LaTeX sub.