Random Thoughts

I swear, I'm still alive, it's just I was sick for a while and then just overwhelmed. But now I am taking steps to tackle this problem by writing out what still needs to be done.

Things required in order to release an alpha version:

• Write quick setup instructions
• Create sample content
• Finalise default themes, including dark/light theme switcher
• Test quick run shell script for OSX (Windows .cmd file is complete)
• Document all configuration options and how to use them
• Code walkthrough (like the original makesite.py)
• Complete feature list
• Document advanced usage, like single directory output
• Check the dang thing into git (yes, yes, bad practice, I know)

Things not yet implemented that I would like to have by beta release:

• JSON file output for use in frontend scripts
• RSS support
• Automated tests (yes, yes, bad practice, I know)

Basically I have a lot of documentation to write, and I just cannot seem to get into the headspace to do it /o\

So where am I up to with this? What I have right now you can give a folder of AO3-generated HTML files and it will output a list of works, including their tags, and format the works according to a custom template.

It works pretty well... as long as you have used all the metadata fields AO3 supports.

If, for example, your work doesn't have a category, or a relationship, or isn't in a series, it outputs ugly templating placeholders. This is because I based it on makesite.py, which has a very basic templating system.

There are multiple ways I could get around this, such as:
a) Add a(nother) field to the configuration to allow us to define the format, label and wrapper for every metadata field. Achieves the aim in a flexible way but is fiddly and requires more documentation.
b) Replace the individual metadata fields with one big metadata block that are all formatted the same way. Not flexible if you want to display work metadata in a Non-AO3 way.
c) Just give in and implement Jinja2 templating, which allows the use of if/else/then structures in the templates, among many other features. Will still require some documentation but at least it's a useful skill for people who are new to it (as opposed to learning something unique to this system). I've never used it before but I have used the PHP equivalent so hopefully it's transferable.

So I think I'm going to have to go with option c. (The list of changes in my git fork is going to be ridiculous.) This will still be useful if I decide to output Hugo-friendly Markdown in the future.

( List of features it currently supports )

I don't think I posted about this here when I wrote it last year, but it helped me out today, so here goes:

Bookmarklet: Show Spoilers (Beta)

This will take whatever text you have highlighted and make the background colour white and the text colour black. I use it on my mobile browser to show spoilers where people have made the text and background the same colour.

(When I opened up the link to paste it in I reread my code and immediately felt the need to re-do it because it was hideous. Why am I like this!)

The Yuletide 2017 Tag Set is open! \o/

However, I'm highly unlikely to sign up this year because I'm not in a good writing/requesting place right now, so this is a note to let people know if there are any bugs or UI improvements for my tag set filter bookmarklet, please let me know as I probably won't notice on my own.