huyston / willnotebook

New way to do academic writing.

WillNotebook

WillNotebook is inspired by jupyter (notebook) project, but aims the specifics of academic writing. The idea is to merge the advantages and functionalities of Word, Latex and Python together into one powerful and hackable software.

What can I do with WillNotebook?

• Add titles, subtitles, etc
• Add normal, bold, italic and both bold and italic text
• Add python code and execute it within the document
• Call python variables into the text
• Add equations with latex and sympy
• Add figures
• Reference equations, sections and figures with automatic numbering
• Automatic citation handling using .bib (using latex)
• Automatic References creation (using latex)
• Create tables
• Create bullet point lists
• Plots using matplotlib

Export formats

The default format is ".will" and it is the recommended format for holding all the information that WillNotebook needs. However you can export to other formats like:

• .tex (clean LaTeX file)
• .docx (Equations are not included yet)
• .pdf (from pdflatex)
• .pdf (from WillNotebook browser printing)

How is it different from Jupyter Notebook?

It is focused on academic writting. And so it provides an automatic section numbering, equation numbering, referencing system, figure with captions and sources and it is more clean and readable (like a report or a paper with hidden code).

How to use it?

Dependencies

WillNotebook needs Python3 to run, so if you don't have it installed download it here. If you are under Linux, it's very likely that you already have it installed. If not, use your package manager to install it.

To run the server you will need to have installed the following packages:

• Cherrypy (To run the server)
• Dill (to save the code state)
• [Optional] LaTeX (to produce the pdflatex)
• [Optional] Python-docx (to produce .docx documents)
• [Optional] Sympy (To do math calculations)

You can install Python packages using pip:

# pip install cherrypy dill python-docx sympy

To install LaTeX, install TexLive (Linux) or MiKTeX(Windows). Note: Windows compatibility is not tested and probably PDF creation with pdflatex won't work. Export to .tex should work on all platforms even without LaTeX installed.

Ubuntu

# apt-get install texlive

ArchLinux

# pacman -S texlive-most

Start the server

Download all the files and run the server "main.py". After this, visit "127.0.0.1:8080" on your browser and have fun :) You should read the example for instructions on how to create your first document, by opening the "example.will" file in the blue bar.

The future

I made this to write my PhD thesis, so I shall improve it to be easy, hackable, and with many features that improve writting efficiency.

Hackable?

Yes! WillNotebook runs in a browser and all the code is easily hackable. It's written in Python (even the browser code thanks to Brython!). So, if you need to change how the .tex exporter handles the figures, you can change the code yourself very easily. I'll try to make a good documentation of how it works so anyone can play with it.

And more! It's also html! You can play with the Notebook html within the document, but it's on your own :)

WARNING VERY EARLY ALPHA

This is still in development, but fell free to play with it, request features and help me code it ;)

I think it's all for now.

Have fun :)

willnotebook's Issues

Citation with multiple references causes section creations with references

This might be caused because the handler doesn't know how to recount citation with multiple references.
Split multiple references into separate keys for the counter to work properly.

Failed opening file without references

File doesn't open if it doesn't have references.

[feature] Implement insertion and deletion of bibtex references in the notebook menu

Create a menu where the user can insert a bibtex reference to the document. It should check for existing bibtex entries to avoid duplicates.
For deletion the user must specify the key reference of the bibtex entry to delete. Automatic deletion may be problematic because if the user deletes a cell with the only bibtex entry in the document the bibtex entry will be lost and reinsertion will be necessary.
For instance the user should explicitly specify entries for insertion and deletion.

#Feature Implement TODO with links and marks in the left side pannel

Implement TODO with links and marks in the left side pannel

[Feature] Create references to section heading

Implement a way of referencing sections in the same way as LaTeX, using the \ref{label} command.

Sections with labels don't get exported correctly to tex

Sections with labels don't get exported correctly to tex.

[feature] Menu for research terms in academic google

It is useful to be able to search for a specific topic directly from the notebook. Search terms will be forwarded to a scientific search engine, such as Academic Google. A new tab should be created with the results from the search engine.

[Feature] Format bold and italic at same time

Maybe mimic markdown bold and italic

Cells get inside the table when opening a file with table

When a file with a table is opened, the cells bellow get inside the table.

[Feature] Implement selection, copy and paste of cells

Implement selection, copy and paste of cells. This requires an implementation of a clipboard in the server to properly handle the commands of the notebook.

\label must come after \caption or figure references gets the section's number

Change labels position to be after captions to avoid reference errors.

[Feature] Open custom file from disk

This obvious feature still needs implementation. This should be easy. Send the file to the server like the images are sent.

Use a debug method instead of print

Create a debug method instead of printing variables. Print can cause encoding problems and corrupt generated documents.

References break when using mathjax ref and notebook's ref

If one uses the \ref{} command to reference a section or image AND the document has any reference to a equation, then the referencing breaks. Some references vanishes (mathjax ones).
Reference breaks when something touches the mathjax links.

Citations have an space at the end

This space must be removed.

[Feature] Export tables to docx format

Export tables in docx format.

[Feature] Select sections through the navigation pannel

This is a feature of the navigation pannel described in issue #19. This can facilitate the selection of whole chapters of sections.

separate images and bib database for each document

Each document must have its own images folder with its own bib references database. There may exist a global database and a local database with priority. If the reference label is not found in the local database, the global database can be checked for the reference. The reference, if found in the global, passes to the local database.

Separate folders for different documents

This should be done to prevent loss of documents if names are the same. It's also good to provide the .tex with the images folder inside a .zip format.

[Feature] Handle images in tex (and pdflatex) format

Implement the handling of images when exporting to tex, which is also used by pdflatex. This should be easy to implement.

[Feature] Export tables in latex format

Export tables in Latex format

Load is broken with Python 3.8 due to dill incompatibility

A dependency of WillNotebook, dill, have incompatibility issues with Python 3.8.

For now, a workaround is to use the older Python 3.7 untill this issue is fixed.

Implement authors cell

Implement the authors cell for the article templates and reports.

Use 7z to compress the files of the document

Use 7z to store document files, like .docx uses zip.

[Feature] Handle bold, italic and both on .docx format

This feature should be easy to implement.

[Feature] Slider to control the figure size

There should be a way to customize the figure size in an easy way. An slider should do ok. This will generate a value of 0-1, 1 meaning the whole textwidth. The relation with the textwidth will make it easier to export to other formats like tex and docx. Relates to issue #5

Create HTML classes for better formatting with stylesheets

Classes should be created to facilitate the style customization of the document.

[Feature] Add tables

Define a syntax and implement the addition of table cells in the notebook.

Open document with citations doesn't update references

When a document with citations and the automatic references is saved and opened, it doesn't update new citations to the references section.

[Feature] Navigation pannel

This should show the document structure in the side of the document for easier navigation.

[Feature] Implement citation and references

One important feature for academic writing is to cite and create the references automatically. This should be implemented using the LaTeX referencing system which works well and have support for many publisher styles.

[Feature] Handle images in docx format.

Currently it is not possible to export a document with images to docx. It should be easy to implement tough.

[Feature] Export references to docx format

References are not properly exported and this should be fixed.

[Feature] Create references to images

Implement a way of referencing images in the same way as LaTeX, using the \ref{label} command.

[Feature] Create an easy way to format text in italic

Maybe mimic markdown italic text

[Feature] Run multiple documents at the same time

As of now, it is only possible to work with 1 document at a time. It should be implemented a way of working with multiple files at a time.

Citations gets put in wrong place

When one calls the \cite{} command, if there is another one in the same cell, both get put near each other instead of where the \cite{} commands are.

[Feature] Create an easy way to format bold text

Maybe mimic markdown. bold text

[feature] Retrieve a bibtex entry key by it's title or other bibtex information

It is easy to forget the reference key for an inserted bibtex entry. It's useful to be able to retrieve the key for an already inserted reference. This functionality should be available in the menu.

Use separate commands for referencing different objects

When referencing an image, there should be a specific command to do it, like \fig{}. This feature can fix the bug related in issue #15 and provide a manner or automatically handle referencing standards.

For example, one can simply type \fig{test} to reference an image in the IEEE style, and should produce Fig. 1, and not manually type Fig. \ref{test} to do it. It's also more readable.

References don't get exported correctly for tex

The special commands \sec \fig and \eq needs to be converted back to the LaTeX style \ref.

Use a single parser for export formats

Instead of writting a parser for each export format, just use one and call the format specific methods to create the document. This will me it easier to extend the format options.