Researchers often face challenges in writing papers that contain data analysis and charts, as the process involves cobbled-together tools and scattered data files, leading to time wasted on remembering generation processes and searching for lost files. This can lead to mistakes and inefficiencies. Ink & Switch is prototyping Jacquard, a collaborative environment for empirical research papers, to streamline this process and free researchers from tedious bookkeeping. They are also exploring provenance tracking to integrate text and computational parts seamlessly. The surprising takeaway so far is that implicit provenance tracking eliminates the need for a makefile. The project draws inspiration from prior work such as FileWeaver and Burrito.
https://www.inkandswitch.com/jacquard/notebook/