Proposal for a more user-friendly interface

[aether6430]

Hi MathltYT,

I’ve been exploring your project, MathLikeAnim-rs, and I appreciate the effort that’s gone into it! It has some great potential, but I’ve found that the current interface feels a bit clumsy and could be improved to provide a smoother user experience.

Would you be open to collaboration to enhance the interface? I believe with a few adjustments, it could be made more intuitive and easier to use for a wider audience. I’d be happy to help contribute or discuss ideas further if you're interested.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Best regards

[MathItYT]

Of course! You can contribute and discuss ideas freely!

I don't know what you mean by 'clumsy', if you can elaborate on that, it would be great :)

[aether6430]

So basically I struggled a lot while trying to figure out the api for my project. Majorly because there is no proper documentation so all I was left with was code snippets which you have left. While these work perfectly, any changes I made didn't work.
Yeah while it does sound like a skill issue, I have a project I have a deadline for. So I wanted to know if you could update the docs or help me build an interface similar to that of Motion Canvas

P.S: I am trying to build an AI video generator which would take in the API from mathlikeanim-rs and prove me the code to generate a video based on the given prompt. So the simpler the API the better the results

[MathItYT]

I'll update the docs. And about the AI tool, remember that AI tools still don't recognize MathLikeAnim-rs well as the project, so you'll need fine-tuning. For that reason, I'm gonna work in a MathLikeAnim-rs dataset too, so get ready :)

[aether6430]

Yeah thanks a LOT, a better API would take a huge burden off me. And yeah I am aware of the fact that AI tools don't recognize MathLikeAnim-rs so I was embedding docs and was using carefully written prompts for the desired outcome. This was a video I got from a previous session while using Motion Canvas. However I felt like it didn't have the essence of what manim was and felt like MathLikeAnim-rs was a better choice.

476320515_9648435145168094_2412503061640681527_n.mp4

A few points I would like you to remember if you're working on this project is that

• The docs and even the website are running an older version of MathLikeAnim-rs version 8 to be precise whereas the latest version is 10. This causes a bit of disparity too.
• It would really help if you could build an exporter for the video, like to MP4, but if you feel like that's out of scope that would be fine too

Also if you don't mind me asking, could you say about how long will the docs and updates take to roll out? I am a college student and will have a very tight schedule with exams and stuff so won't be able to work on the project. A proper indication would help me to scope out my project.

Thanks in advance! :)

[MathItYT]

About the first point, I'm currently working at the docs, and it will take about 2 weeks of continuous work (it's a mess to change from MathLikeAnim-rs 8 to 10).
About the second one, MathLikeAnim-rs is meant to make interactive lessons rather than static videos, but if you want to export videos, you can use the browser's MediaRecorder API with a Scene that renders to HTML canvas (see https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39874867/canvas-recording-using-capturestream-and-mediarecorder).

[aether6430]

Yup that was exactly what I was thinking of doing, if I hadn't found another way. Thanks :))

[aether6430]

Heyy just wanted to follow up with you. How's the project looking so far.

[MathItYT]

I'm adding docstrings to all objects, so that the docs will automatically fetch them to make an API reference.

[aether6430]

Ohh damn! That's pretty cool. Could you by any chance add ID/Name calling instead of indices by any chance?

[MathItYT]

Yeah, that could be a really good feature for something like name queries. I'll do that.

[aether6430]

Hey, I really appreciate the work you're putting into this! No pressure at all, but I was wondering if you have any idea when the next version might be out? Totally understand if there's no set timeline—I know these things take time. Just excited to see what's next!

[MathItYT]

The next version will be available maybe tomorrow or in two days more. There will be a big difference: mathlikeanim-rs package from NPM will be deprecated in favor of @mathlikeanim-rs/mathlikeanim-rs, which will be the Rust core, and @mathlikeanim-rs/renderer, which is a pure-TypeScript package that allows to render animations in a browser-side scene.

[MathItYT]

That version will include documentation, even faster rendering and the finished SVG parser :)

[aether6430]

That sounds amazing! I really appreciate the effort you're putting into this, especially with the improved rendering, and the new package structure. Looking forward to the update and the documentation—thank you for your hard work

[aether6430]

Now I just have to figure out a way to feed the documentation into the AI model so it can generate videos! That’ll be an interesting challenge.