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Erik Winter 2020-12-04 17:29:40 +01:00
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doc/why-i-built-my-own-shitty-static-site-generator.adoc
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@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ But the downside is that any blog or article you write is now tied to the system
Ideally, I want to have one folder for storing all my writing. I want to organize that folder the way I think fits best with the content. Then I want to point the site generator to that folder and it should figure out the rest by itself. What needs to be published on my site? Where should it end up? The metadata should be all that is needed to figure it out. And I want the same thing to be true for all other publishers, generators, indexers, etc. that I use, or may want to use in the future. The only solution is then to store your texts in open, tool agnostic document format that can hold all the relevant info. Preferably a plain text format too. Because that part of Markdown I do like. Using simple text editors, Git version control, yes, give me that. Ideally, I want to have one folder for storing all my writing. I want to organize that folder the way I think fits best with the content. Then I want to point the site generator to that folder and it should figure out the rest by itself. What needs to be published on my site? Where should it end up? The metadata should be all that is needed to figure it out. And I want the same thing to be true for all other publishers, generators, indexers, etc. that I use, or may want to use in the future. The only solution is then to store your texts in open, tool agnostic document format that can hold all the relevant info. Preferably a plain text format too. Because that part of Markdown I do like. Using simple text editors, Git version control, yes, give me that.
Enter https://asciidoc.org/[Asciidoc]. A Markdown so structured and complete that you can write a whole book in it. Yet is has the same simple way of adding markup and it looks very similar. I will write another post later on how I used a subset of Asciidoc to make my generator. The point I want to make here is that a simple, in my opinion very reasonable requirement to not want to be forced to reorganise and duplicate my files in an illogical way, already rules out 90% of the available tools. And, conversely, that merely by adopting one of those existing tools, you have suddenly become a bit restricted in the way you can think about your creative work. Enter https://asciidoc.org/[Asciidoc]. A Markdown so structured and complete that you can write a whole book in it. Yet is has the same simple way of adding markup and it looks very similar. I wrote /https://erikwinter.nl/articles/2020/a-tiny-subset-of-asciidoc-for-blogging/[another post] on how I used a subset of Asciidoc to make my generator. The point I want to make here is that a simple, in my opinion very reasonable requirement to not want to be forced to reorganise and duplicate my files in an illogical way, already rules out 90% of the available tools. And, conversely, that merely by adopting one of those existing tools, you have suddenly become a bit restricted in the way you can think about your creative work.
Think about it. The moment you start anything, the moment where the ideas in your head are not more than undefined glimpses of images or feelings. The moment you have to concentrate really hard to not let the fleeting, still wordless impressions slip. Blink your eyes one time too many and they will be lost, floated away. On _that_ very moment, you get bothered by the question “Where should this end up, once it is finished? Is it a note for my diary, or a book?” That is totally backwards. That should not be the first question about your work, but the last. Not everyone is the same, but for me this upfront question is limiting. Thoughts that are not mature enough to be categorized, are forced to materialize in anyway, so you can put them in the right bucket. And then they slip away. Think about it. The moment you start anything, the moment where the ideas in your head are not more than undefined glimpses of images or feelings. The moment you have to concentrate really hard to not let the fleeting, still wordless impressions slip. Blink your eyes one time too many and they will be lost, floated away. On _that_ very moment, you get bothered by the question “Where should this end up, once it is finished? Is it a note for my diary, or a book?” That is totally backwards. That should not be the first question about your work, but the last. Not everyone is the same, but for me this upfront question is limiting. Thoughts that are not mature enough to be categorized, are forced to materialize in anyway, so you can put them in the right bucket. And then they slip away.