Wikipedia article

[TheChymera]

Hi, I'd like to write a wikipedia article for PythonTeX. In order to make sure the wiki people don't deem the topic too insignificant I'll need some resources to cite.

Is there anything else except the SciPy proceedings which talsk about about PythonTeX?

Also do you have a logo? Would you like me to make one?

[TheChymera]

Ok, I found myself strangely motivated by this, so I doodled a bit with parts of the python and LaTeX visual identities and tried to put a logo concept together. It's nothing fancy, just a stylized merger between TeX letters and the python double-snake logo.

What I regard as my finalmost version is the graphic at the right of the image, but here's my whole doodling document for your amusement and convenience :D

[TheChymera]

Ok, I went ahead and also created a stub on Wikipedia. It would be great if you could chip in with some additional descriptions and sources ;)

[gpoore]

Thanks for creating the stub. I've done a little editing and added some additional details and links.

There aren't any other sources to cite yet...I have a paper under review at Computational Science & Discovery, so I'll update all the citation information assuming that is accepted.

I don't have a logo, but had thought about some combination of a snake and "TeX", so I like the general direction you are going. I may be interested in working on a logo at some point, but I don't have the inclination to put together a professional-grade logo at the moment. I am actually hoping to supersede PythonTeX with a broader software package over the next year or so. If that works out, then I will want a proper logo for the new software.

I probably can't get away with a comment like that without generating questions, so here's a brief outline of tentative development plans.

• As I keep adding support for more languages, calling the package "PythonTeX" may not make as much sense. So eventually it may be better to have a meta-package with a different name that supports many languages, and then the PythonTeX package can derive from that.
• I want to refactor and separate the LaTeX-related Python code from the execution-related Python code. Then I can add relatively lightweight extensions for working with other document formats, like markdown. The basic idea is to separate everything out that isn't LaTeX specific, and allow the core of execution-management code to be used in a manner similar to Sweave and knitr.
• I'm playing with the idea of creating a lightweight markup language with something like PythonTeX baked in from the beginning (that same core of execution-management code). I like how lightweight markdown is compared to LaTeX, but it isn't nearly powerful enough. Some of the flavors like Pandoc and MultiMarkdown provide more, but there's still too much of standard LaTeX that's missing. And I'm not sure I'm happy with the direction the extended syntax is going. ReStructuredText/Sphinx can do most of what I want, but I think the syntax is much heavier than it would have to be for many things (more toward LaTeX than markdown). Anyway, I want something that's as light as markdown for all standard tasks, supports all the standard LaTeX features, and has a PythonTeX equivalent built-in. We'll see if I get anywhere...I'll probably have a new repository up with draft specs and maybe a partial implementation in the next few months.

[TheChymera]

Yeah, I was tinking about how PythonTeX already sounded like somewhat of a misnomer seeing as you already also support Ruby and Julia (might I ask why? do people plot/do data analysis with ruby?).

And it would be great to also be able to use pythontex with markdown for instance. I've been thinking a bit about a web-based take on reproducible documents lately, and I'm trying to implement it on my websites. I haven't put together much of a meta-post about this as I'm trying to simplify the workflow (so that this also becoms more interesting for others) - you can have a look at my current reproducible web content instructions for octopress (with mrkdown). pythontex would make an AWESOME match for this (as octopress is a static site generator and the python scripts could be called at generation time). I'd be really happy to hear your thoughts on this.

Having said all this, would you mind if I upload the logo to the wiki page? Provisional or not, I think it helps any project page stand out more if it has a logo.

[gpoore]

I created the package for Python because that's what I primarily use now, but since the beginning I've wanted to be able to add other languages. If nothing else, just for the cases when I can't use Python. Support for Ruby is primarily because the language has a lot of users and no one, as far as I know, has previously provided TeX integration. So it was an opportunity to get more users (I have the impression that several people are using the Ruby part, at least in Japan). Also, it was a bit of a test case for supporting more languages.

It looks like you're taking some nice steps in making your website reproducible. I haven't really thought much about reproducibility at that scale, especially involving web content and the various associated technologies. I've been more focused on the single-document scale.

Regarding the logo, I think some additional work would still be needed by one or both of us before it would be ready for use. I think the snake is still too close to the official Python snake, and I'm unsure about the significance of the "X", as opposed to "TeX" fully spelled out. If you look at the SymPy, NumPy, and SciPy logos, they borrow the idea of a snake (but use a different-looking snake), or they borrow the color scheme, but not both.

By the way, the Wikipedia page has already been proposed for deletion, so maybe that needs to be addressed first. I doubt a logo would save the page, and I wouldn't want to put a lot of time into a logo just to have the page deleted anyway.

[TheChymera]

Yeah, I have seen that. I was under the impression that quite a few people use pythonTeX - mainly based on blog posts such as this, talk on stack exchange sites, or this presentation about it. It seemed quite a few people are buzzing about it so I never asked myself the notability question.

I'm not sure how wikipedia sees citing blogs or university slideshow presentations in this context, but I've seen blogs cited in the past. Maybe adding a source to your paper under review woould save the page for now? I also have an upcoming article about open notebook science (and live documents etc.) mntioning pythonTeX quite extensively on my blog.

[gpoore]

There are quite a few users, given the questions on TeX.SE, the watchers/stars/forks on GitHub, the web and twitter references, and the emails I've received and people I've met. But I have no idea of how many it actually adds up to. You already have some of the more prominent web references; there's also this and this.

I don't think the paper I have under review, or anything I can do for that matter, will affect this, because they want secondary sources.

[TheChymera]

Ok, so in spite of our recent rejection on Wikipedia, I still think that the time of a PythonTeX page has or will shortly come.

I've backed up our work on my userspace - and as soon as we have one or two secondary sources which talk about PythonTeX, maybe we should try updating it and proposing it again.

[gpoore]

Thanks. I also have a copy of some of it. I will leave this open for now, and wait and see where things are later this year.

[TheChymera]

Here's a course by me that showcases PythonTeX at the end. Perhaps it might serve as a reference? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdJ31Ggpr54

[gpoore]

Thanks for that. Other possible references (a talk from TUG 2013, and related paper):

• https://tug.org/tug2013/slides/Mertz-A_Gentle_Introduction_to_PythonTeX.pdf
• https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb34-3/tb108mertz.pdf

I still don't know if this would be enough to make the Wikipedia editors think that an article is justified.

[TheChymera]

In the mean time it's also been mentioned by me at least (and I'm not a co-author, so I guess I count as an external source) at:

• SciPy 2017
• EuroSciPy 2017
• EuroSciPy 2018