Getting Started with Alexandria

Overview

Alexandria opens up to the landing page, where the user can: login (top-right), select whether to only view the publications hosted on the thecitadel document relay or add in their own relays, and scroll/search the publications.

There is also the ability to view the publications as a diagram, if you click on "Visualize", and to publish an e-book or other document (coming soon).

If you click on a card, which represents a 30040 index event, the associated reading view opens to the publication. The app then pulls all of the content events (30041s and 30818s for wiki pages), in the order in which they are indexed, and displays them as a single document.

Each content section (30041 or 30818) is also a level in the table of contents, which can be accessed from the floating icon top-left in the reading view. This allows for navigation within the publication. Publications of type "blog" have a ToC which emphasizes that each entry is a blog post. (This functionality has been temporarily disabled, but the TOC is visible.)

Typical use cases

For e-books

The most common use for Alexandria is for e-books: both those the users have written themselves and those uploaded to Nostr from other sources. The first minor version of the app, Gutenberg, is focused on displaying and producing these publications.

An example of a book is Jane Eyre

For scientific papers

Alexandria will also display research papers with Asciimath and LaTeX embedding, and the normal advanced formatting options available for Asciidoc. In addition, we will be implementing special citation events, which will serve as an alternative or addition to the normal footnotes.

Correctly displaying such papers, integrating citations, and allowing them to be reviewed (with kind 1111 comments), and annotated (with highlights) by users, is the focus of the second minor version, Euler.

Euler will also pioneer the HTTP-based (rather than websocket-based) e-paper compatible version of the web app.

An example of a research paper is Less Partnering, Less Children, or Both?

For documentation

Our own team uses Alexandria to document the app, to display our blog entries, as well as to store copies of our most interesting technical specifications.

For wiki pages

Alexandria now supports wiki pages (kind 30818), allowing for collaborative knowledge bases and documentation. Wiki pages, such as this one about the Sybil utility use the same Asciidoc format as other publications but are specifically designed for interconnected, evolving content.

Wiki pages can be linked to from other publications and can contain links to other wiki pages, creating a web of knowledge that can be navigated and explored.