A small collection of fun demos with latex. It is probably breaking a plethora of latex conventions, so feedback is always welcome.
Latex's token evaluation is something I'm still reading up on here. Once I am more comfortable with it, I'll probably refactor a lot of the code in this project.
Latex has some builtin commands to loop over a set of values or until a certain condition is matched. This in combination with conditional statements makes implementing algorithms fairly straight forward.
By defining commands in the format <arrayname><index> which contain the value to be stored at this index,
it is possible to model arrays. Combine this with a size counter and you got a stack.
Combining two arrays and a basic string hashing function, one can build something which at least somewhat resembles
a hash map. It does not have buckets or any other clever logic. The hashing function uses the strings length and a scuffed
word count to calculate a somewhat random value. The underlying array has a set size \hashMapSize. Finally, the collision
strategy is just looking for the next free slot.
This is the reason I even bothered with the above topics. Basically, I thought it would be handy so store meta information along with the written text which can be edited and retrieved at any time.
Example usages:
- Track established concepts throughout the text
- Track character traits in your story
- Track worldbuilding details the reader has been introduced to
The goal is to ease restructuring of already witten content, going back and adding more details / plot points, or just simply coming back to an ongoing work after a long time.
First each relevant context needs to be created (preferably in the praeamble) with \contextCreate{<name>}. Note that
the name of a context has to be a single word (no spaces).
Then you can add and remove items from a context in your text with
\contextAdd{<name>}{<info to add>} and \contextRemove{<name>}{<info to remove>}.
Then you can assert preconditions for an upcoming block of text with
\contextRequire{<name>}{<info which must be in the context at that point>}.
Finally you can print an individual context \contextPrint{<name>} or all contexts \contextPrintAll at any point
in your text to find out what is currently established/known/...
Checkout content/context.tex for example usage and reference demos.pdf to see how it plays out.