Florilegium: Procedural Flowers in LaTeX

(github.com)

200 points | by nanna 8 hours ago

22 comments

  • lkm0 4 hours ago
    In the same vein, a few years ago, somebody implemented procedural decorations for a recreation of Byrne's "Elements of Euclid" in LaTeX: https://github.com/jemmybutton/byrne-euclid

    (bottom of the readme)

  • scott_codie 3 hours ago
    In the reddit post, it is clear the person who came up with this didn't want it to be copied. I feel sad for that person.
    • anamexis 2 hours ago
      Why? I'm sure basically any closed product would prefer that there were no open source copies, but why feel sad for them?
    • bluerooibos 2 hours ago
      > The creator prefers to keep the source closed to avoid code critiques

      That doesn't sound like someone who doesn't want their idea copied.

  • archermarks 4 hours ago
    Gorgeous but the AI text is so grating.
    • artursapek 3 hours ago
      It's so recognizable lol. All the staccato.
  • whimsicalism 5 hours ago
    I think the phrase 'florilegium' must be an AI basin of sorts as I've had it suggested by AI as a name for a few projects of my own.
    • jihadjihad 5 hours ago
      It's basically a Latin version of the Greek anthology [0], but far less commonly used. I'd imagine it occupies similar territory to anthology in high-dimensional space, though, so seems reasonable for an LLM to pick it up.

      0: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anthology

      • ggsp 4 hours ago
        I had no clue about anthology’s etymology. Very cool!
  • paaloeye 2 hours ago
    This one is a stunner! Now I'm thinking about the next level: define a number of classes of procedurally generated patterns and let LLM decide overall sentiment relevance per page and make it somewhat logical across the document.

    Rebuild the document a few times, change the temperature, and choose the best.

  • ClaraForm 4 hours ago
    This is beautiful, thank you!

    I just asked Deepseek 4.1 Flash to convert it to an Obsidian extension that uses the file-name as the seed, and the result [1] is exactly something I've been dreaming of for so many years while I take daily notes.

    [1] imagepaste.org/i/8zu627ud.png

  • bluerooibos 2 hours ago
    Nice! I do slightly prefer the implementation/style in the Reddit post - do you have any plans to try and recreate that more closely or add multiple style options to it? Neat either way.
  • bonzini 5 hours ago
    Readme is AI. :/
    • Thomashuet 4 hours ago
      Not just the README, all of it. The author gives more details about it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/LaTeX/comments/1xixznw/comment/19rv...
      • bonzini 2 hours ago
        I don't mind that as much. Scratching an itch with AI is fine, but if you want to publish it to the world I sort of expect some effort to show why you did that and why I should care.
    • forgetfulness 5 hours ago
      This would have hit harder ten years ago, TeX ornamentation was a beautiful craft in all senses of the word.

      This is still pretty neat, but it's just not the same as carrying the tradition of Donald Knuth.

  • nico 5 hours ago
    Very impressed with both the cool idea and visuals, as well as the technical details. Had no idea you could do animations in Latex/PDF. So beautiful! Thank you for sharing
  • skyberrys 4 hours ago
    I love it!!! I've tried years ago to make something like this, it didn't work out. But it makes me so happy to see that you did it! Great job!
  • vessenes 3 hours ago
    Nice. I like that different print runs will have different procedurally generated flowers; nice touch.
  • coreyp_1 6 hours ago
    Quite beautiful.
  • james_marks 5 hours ago
    This is beautiful, thank you!
  • b19n 6 hours ago
    There are (many) times lately where I have become completely disillusioned with software, despise it at work and at home. But then I see something beautiful like this and feel marginally better.
  • Avicebron 5 hours ago
    Definitely taking a closer look at this after work, awesome job.
  • WesolyKubeczek 1 hour ago
    I don't care that it's vibecoded, it's beautiful.
  • fch42 4 hours ago
    This is beautiful - thanks for sharing.
  • aanet 5 hours ago
    This is so pretty. Thanks for sharing.
  • RGS1811 5 hours ago
    This is gorgeous! Great idea!
  • bbor 2 hours ago
    Am I miffed that something I've tried multiple times with the latest models has been accomplished here so beautifully, and in LUA (!!!) nonetheless? A little! But it's worth it to know that it is indeed possible...

    Great work. I doubt you care, but try not to get caught up in the idea that you might have violated someones god-given property rights by making pretty flowers for fun in the margins of PDFs.

  • LeTeutz 6 hours ago
    YES THIS IS WHAT I NEED
  • ligarota 3 hours ago
    Now do it in Typst.

    Edit: sad that is AI. And that explains why it's in LaTeX

    • forgotpwd16 17 minutes ago
      It's LaTeX because the reddit post, inquiring on how to do this and which sparked author to make this project and into which author shared it, was made in the LaTeX sub.
    • fiforpg 3 hours ago
      If not for AI, the project would have remained where it was born: in the author's head.

      I do understand your sentiment, of course.