Pollen is great. I wish it was more widely used. One of the only reasons I don't use it for most things is that adding the whole of Racket as a dependency comes across as a little much.<p>One of my "one day..." projects is to try and reimplement a subset of Pollen using <a href="https://github.com/racket/zuo">https://github.com/racket/zuo</a> which I think would make it much easier to integrate as a much smaller dependency. But maybe the whole "ease of use" budget is blown by using a Lisp in the first place. :)<p>In any case, if you've ever had to write a technical manual before (or some kind of heavy technical reference), I think you should give Pollen a try. It has much more general answers to a lot of problems you encounter when writing complex web documents. It is an interesting, useful, and pragmatic point in the design space, IMO.
Butterick is a sharp guy. I absolutely love one of the books he made with Pollen: <i>Practical Typography</i> <a href="http://practicaltypography.com/" rel="nofollow">http://practicaltypography.com/</a><p>Pollen seems like a power tool; my needs are largely met by Scribble, but I’d like to get more comfortable with Pollen.
I used Pollen to write a book[0] and I generally liked the experience.<p>I didn't use it to create the ebook or PDF though as you have to create everything from scratch that way. I forked the web version[1] to make it generate the epub and I laid out the physical book using InDesign.<p>If I ever write a book again I'd probably start looking at alternatives that make the epub/PDF generation easier.<p>[0]: <a href="https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2020/05/03/how_i_wrote_my_book_using_pollen/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2020/05/03/how_i_wrote_my_b...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/02/17/how_i_did_the_layout_for_my_self-published_book/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jonashietala.se/blog/2024/02/17/how_i_did_the_la...</a>
I use Pollen for my personal webpage. I like using it, but it takes a bit to get going. The out-of-the-box experience with Pollen is more aimed at creating a single document, so expect to write a bit of plumbing in Racket to tie everything together (things like RSS feeds, footnotes, table of contents or a feed of recent posts).
I’m always looking out for digital book publishing systems. This article invites me to check out three books published using Pollen. It then asks two questions.<p>> Are they better than the last digital books you encountered?<p>Sadly, they aren’t. One lacks any navigation on the pages. The others have <i>some</i> navigation, but lack an accessible TOC on the page for context, something I have come to expect from digital books. Furthermore there is no way to search the contents of the book. This is a non-negotiable in my book. Pun intended. :)<p>Also missing, is any other format, such as PDF and ePub, which is also a deal-breaker for me, as I want my books to work for as wide an audience as possible.<p>> Would you like your next digital book to work like that?<p>No thanks. But the design is nice. I hope the system keeps improving.