Pollen: A publishing system written in Racket

Pollen is great. I wish it was more widely used. One of the only reasons I don&#x27;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 &quot;one day...&quot; projects is to try and reimplement a subset of Pollen using <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;racket&#x2F;zuo">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;racket&#x2F;zuo</a> which I think would make it much easier to integrate as a much smaller dependency. But maybe the whole &quot;ease of use&quot; budget is blown by using a Lisp in the first place. :)<p>In any case, if you&#x27;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:&#x2F;&#x2F;practicaltypography.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;practicaltypography.com&#x2F;</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&#x27;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&#x27;d probably start looking at alternatives that make the epub&#x2F;PDF generation easier.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonashietala.se&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;03&#x2F;how_i_wrote_my_book_using_pollen&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonashietala.se&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2020&#x2F;05&#x2F;03&#x2F;how_i_wrote_my_b...</a><p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonashietala.se&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;17&#x2F;how_i_did_the_layout_for_my_self-published_book&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.jonashietala.se&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;17&#x2F;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).

What is the difference between a publishing system and a type setting system? Am I able to output tables and what would he the syntax?

What&#x27;s the difference between Pollen and Latex ? A quick read of the Pollen home page didn&#x27;t told me so I aks here...

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>&gt; 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>&gt; 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.