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newsSitemap created for bkhome.org
I have written another documentation page for shellCMS, explaining how to create a sitemap file and submit it to Google:
http://bkhome.org/shellcms/submitting-a-sitemap-to-google.html
It turned out to be very easy, and I am updating the sitemap
every time that I do an upload.
Tags: shellcms
shellCMS now has a search box
The search box is at the top of the "Barry's News" page. It could be placed on other pages.
It is a simple html form, using Google. very simple.
The config file in shellCMS has variable search_box_pages,
which specifies on what pages (or none) that the search box is to
appear.
I made a submission to Google to spider my site, however, at the time of writing this, it is far from complete, showing many links that no longer exist.
I need to do some experimenting, as the box width is not
displaying correctly on my browser. In the <form>
tag, there is the <input> tag, with size="20",
which according to online docs, is supposed to set the width of
the box to 20 characters. But it doesn't.
EDIT
Have changed the search box to the official one from duckduckgo,
created here:
https://duckduckgo.com/search_box
Have created a variable search_box_engine, to be
able to offer a choice of search engine. Currently it is search_box_engine="duckduckgo"
I was reading about duckduckgo. Apparently it does not do much
web crawling. Instead it probes other search engines, in
particular Bing. So there is nowhere to submit a URL to
duckduckgo, have to submit to Bing, then duckduckgo will pick it
up.
Which won't happen immediately, and I read some complaints on how
long that takes. So, there is a downside to
duckduckgo.
EDIT2
Have got the google search box working. Which is what you see
above. Enter a search term, and it will open in a new browser tab,
and search the site.
The variable is now search_box_engine="google"
There is still a problem. I cannot change the width of the search
box. Tried "width" style, the "size" parameter, no go. Just
ignores everything, displays at the default width, whatever that
is. Viewing with SeaMonkey.
Tags: shellcms
Install shellCMS as a blog, tutorial
I previously posted a tutorial how to install shellCMS as a document manager, at the root of bkhome.org:
http://bkhome.org/shellcms/install-at-top-level-as-document-manager.html
Now I have written another tutorial, to install shellCMS as a blog, in this case in a folder, bkhome.org/news:
http://bkhome.org/shellcms/installing-shellcms-as-a-blog.html
I added the capability of one installation of shellCMS to link to another. If you look at those above pages, you will see a button at the top linking to this blog.shellCMS is turning out to be lots of fun, and I am brimming over with ideas for its future development.
Tags: shellcms
shellCMS sans markdown uploaded
OK, here is the first upload of shellCMS rewritten to write new posts, or edit posts, using a html editor, instead of markdown:
http://bkhome.org/files/shellcms.tar.gz
I am using SeaMonkey Composer, WYSIWYG html editor, however, there are other choices for Linux, such as Screem, Bracket and Bluefish.
The last version that has markdown is here:
http://bkhome.org/files/shellcms-20170902.tar.gz
Tags: shellcms
shellCMS moved from markdown to html
I posted yesterday about my growing reservations about markdown:
http://bkhome.org/news/201709/limitations-of-markdown.html
An additional comment that I can make, is that due to it's limitations, there are many markdown extensions, trying to get it up to a reasonable level of functionality.
I am sure that others out there must have come to the same conclusion about markdown. Yes, read this:
https://www.adamhyde.net/whats-wrong-with-markdown/
Yep, I agree 100%. Apart from simple github READMEs, markdown is an awful fit. It is a bad fit for blog posts like this one, as I soon found out when I wanted to do more than rudimentary posts.
Well, Fatdog has gone over to markdown, and it seems just about
everybody is on the markdown bandwagon, so I got seduced.
I played with markdown briefly for use as local html help pages in Easy OS. Soon realised the limitations, and went back to html.
Then there was BashBlog, which became shellCMS, and I used the nice markdown plugin for Geany. Started hitting gotchas, and doubts crept in.
So, what to do? Fortunately, shellCMS is a small bash script, that I can readily modify, unlike those enormous CMSs out there, where you are locked-in to whatever way they want to do things.
Simple solution, I rewrote shellCMS to write posts with a html editor. Not just any editor, I am using SeaMonkey Composer, a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) html editor. Using it right now to type this post.
Now, creating a post is so simple! What I am typing in is exactly WYSIWYG. Without the page-layout stuff of course. As I mentioned in the post yesterday, just because html, css, javascript, etc., supports page-layout and all sorts of fancy things, doesn't preclude writing simple non-page-layout html, as I am doing now.
But, anything extra? A table? No problem! Lovely GUI tools to
create a table just as I want.
Well, now I have a CMS, in my case a static site generator, so have the advantage of a consistent page layout, headers, links, buttons, etc., and I am still using SM Composer!
I haven't uploaded this new shellCMS yet. Want to do a bit more testing. I converted this blog, which was fairly easy as there are as yet few posts -- it required replacing all the raw .md files with .htmraw. The latter, ".htmraw", are my posts.
Tags: shellcms
Limitations of markdown
I am beginning to have doubts about markdown, for anything but the most simplest usage. Blogs, github, maybe ok, but for more complex pages, there are serious limitations.
I was porting the "How Easy works" page to markdown. This was originally written in SeaMonkey Composer, WYSIWYG HTML editor.
Due to the limitations of standard markdown syntax, as per the Daring Fireball markdown to HTML converter:
https://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
I had to insert actual HTML. OK, markdown allows this, and passes it through unchanged. But not quite...
First, a comment. For a reasonably-complex tutorial, here I am having to insert HTML. So, why am I not writing the whole thing in HTML, and avoid all the markdown-to-HTML conversion gotchas?
And yes, there are many gotchas.
Secondly, I was puzzled, as the markdown converter was mangling some of the HTML code. What I am doing is inserting syntax-highlighted HTML that was exported from Geany text editor.
Geany outputs lines that look like this:
<span class="style_2">###find drives###</span><br />
<span class="style_2">#find the drive we are booting on (has vmlinuz, initrd.q, q.sfs), and working drv...</span><br />
<span class="style_7">. /</span><span class="style_8">BOOT_SPECS </span><span class="style_2">#has BOOT_DISKID, BOOT_PARTNUM, BOOT_FS, BOOT_DIR, WKG_DISKID, WKG_PARTNUM, WKG_FS, WKG_DIR, Q_DISTRO_VERSION</span><br />
<span class="style_8">echo -n -e </span><span class="style_5">"\\033[1;35mFinding drives:\\033[0;39m\n " </span><span class="style_2">#purple</span><br />
<span class="style_8">CNT</span><span class="style_7">=</span><span class="style_3">0</span><span class="style_7">; </span><span class="style_8">Pb</span><span class="style_7">=</span><span class="style_6">''</span><span class="style_7">; </span><span class="style_8">Pw</span><span class="style_7">=</span><span class="style_6">''</span><span class="style_7">; </span><span class="style_8">BOOT_DRV</span><span class="style_7">=</span><span class="style_6">''</span><span class="style_7">; </span><span class="style_8">WKG_DRV</span><span class="style_7">=</span><span class="style_6">''</span><br />
<span class="style_4">while </span><span class="style_7">[ </span><span class="style_9">$CNT </span><span class="style_7">-</span><span class="style_8">lt </span><span class="style_3">8 </span><span class="style_7">];</span><span class="style_4">do </span><span class="style_2">#drives may take couple seconds to become available.</span><br />
<span class="style_8">sleep </span><span class="style_3">1</span><br />
<span class="style_8">CNT</span><span class="style_7">=$((</span><span class="style_9">$CNT</span><span class="style_7">+</span><span class="style_3">1</span><span class="style_7">))</span><br />
<span class="style_4">for </span><span class="style_8">aDRV </span><span class="style_4">in </span><span class="style_7">/</span><span class="style_8">sys</span><span class="style_7">/</span><span class="style_8">block</span><span class="style_7">/</span><span class="style_8">sd</span><span class="style_7">[</span><span class="style_8">a-z</span><span class="style_7">] /</span><span class="style_8">sys</span><span class="style_7">/</span><span class="style_8">block</span><span class="style_7">/</span><span class="style_8">mmcblk</span><span class="style_7">[</span><span class="style_3">0</span><span class="style_7">-</span><span class="style_3">9</span><span class="style_7">]</span><br />
<span class="style_4">do</span><br />
I put this inside <code></code> tags, and it is supposed to be passed through as-is, but isn't. For example, the text BOOT_DEV something WKG_DEV gets translated to BOOT<em>DEV something WKG</em>DEV.
At first glance, I thought "great", but then I noticed the mangling here and there. Reading the Daring Fireball docs:
Unlike block-level HTML tags, Markdown syntax is processed within span-level tags.
Even though the <span> tags are within a <code block makes no difference. Now the word that came to mind was "cr*p".
The problem is, there doesn't seem to be any way around it, using the Daring Fireball converter. So, googling, found that the Kramdown converter supports this:
By default, kramdown parses kramdown syntax inside span HTML tags. However, this behaviour can be configured with the parsespanhtml option. If this is set to true, then syntax parsing in HTML spans is enabled, if it is set to false, parsing is disabled.
It is also possible to set this on a per-tag basis.
So, I need to investigate alternatives to Daring Fireball. However, the first point I raised is very valid.
HTML is for everything, from the basic markup that markdown emulates, to sophisticated page layout. However, there is no difficulty in entering basic non-page-layout HTML tags when creating a page. Which does raise the fundamental question, why use markdown?
Why drop down to such a primitive syntax, when you find that anything beyond the most basic usage requires insertion of HTML anyway?
This is a valid question. I am thinking of extending shellCMS to enabled writing posts in SeaMonkey Composer. These will be raw non-page-layout HTML, to which shellCMS can add header and footer. Expect another post on this topic!
Tags: shellcms
shellCMS uploaded, online docs
I have beavered away, adding features to shellCMS. Got to say, this is fun.
Documentation is starting, and is to be found here:
http://bkhome.org/shellcms
Yes, bkhome.org is now driven by shellCMS, installed at the root of the site, as explained here:
http://bkhome.org/shellcms/install-at-top-level-as-document-manager.html
It is most interesting to consider what more can be done to enhance shellCMS. Inherited from BashBlog, is support for Twitter or Disqus comments plugin. I tried the latter, didn't like it, plan to give Twitter a go.
shellCMS, as with BashBlog, is a single small shell script. Inherited from Bashblog is the ability to edit the html files after they are generated from markdown, or even not use markdown at all and create the posts directly with html.
There may be problems with this though, and I will probably change the script to insist on posts created and edited by markdown. That change would simplify parts of the script.
Another thing that would be great would be a GUI. probably using gtkdialog. The shellcms.tar.gz tarball could have gtkdialog bundled in it, for convenience when using on other Linux distributions.
Also, a search-box would be great, perhaps using google.
Tags: shellcms
BashBlog forked to shellCMS
This news blog started life powered by BashBlog, project page here:
https://github.com/cfenollosa/bashblog
It is very simple, too simple I soon realised. I have been hacking on the script. Some hacks are specific to my requirements, some are generic and could be adopted by the BashBlog developers if they wish.
As my script has become very different from BashBlog, I decided to give it a new name, shellCMS. It will be hosted on my site soon, expected to be here:
http://bkhome.org/shellcms/
Here are the main changes from BashBlog:
Local development
shellCMS is designed for local development, whereas BashBlog is designed for development on the remote site.
shellCMS allows use of a nice local markdown editor, such as Geany with markdown plugin, which has real-time preview.
A script remote-sync uses rsync to upload the files to the remote site.
Redesigned page layout
There is now an overall table, of fixed width, to optimise fitting in a mobile device window.
There is a banner image at top, with links just below the banner.
Document mode
shellCMS can now be a document manager, not just a blog. There is a variable, MODE, that can be set to "blog" or "document".
Blog mode is what you are seeing now, on this blog. Here is an example of document mode:
http://easyos.info/tech/
Sub-folder-storage
BashBlog stores everything in the same folder. The filesystem will slow down as the number of posts increases, so BashBlog does not scale very well.
shellCMS stores posts in sub-folders.
In document mode, the sub-folders are named by tag (category) (and only one tag is allowed per post).
In blog mode, the sub-folders are named by post-date, in format yyyymm, for example 201708.
page-splitting
Another reason that BashBlog does not scale well, is that a page view of all posts with a particular tag, can be very big, if, for example, there are 1,000 posts. In fact, this is a horrendous situation, as an enormous page is created.
shellCMS will only create a page showing the first 8 of those 1,000, with "Older" (and "Newer") links. Up to 5 older pages can be viewed, past which a history summary page is displayed.
Tags: shellcms