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Hello World

September 21, 2009 at 10:05 AM | categories: Software | Comment

Hi, this is my first post. I decided to start a project about a week ago to write my own blogging software that used some of my favorite technologies including Mako, Git, and rST/Sphinx. A colleague of mine pointed me to Blogofile which had most of what I wanted aside from the rST/Sphinx integration.

Hacked on it a bit over my vacation this weekend and finally have something working. It’s certainly not ready for the mainstream yet. The following things will require work:

Current Issues¶

Headings/Sections. No matter what I do, they convert into <h1/> tags if I only have on heading on a page
Cross-referencing posts properly
Image inclusions
Ability to use :date: metadata tag instead of :post_date: (need to look into this)
Getting rid of some spninx artifacts like the TOC, and the index file which aren’t being used
Would like to define the table such as
```
Hello World
===========
```
Instead of :title: Hello World
A tighter integration with Blogofile

I believe the latter will require a custom Sphinx builder. That will probably fix most of the other problems too, but seems rather intensive right now.

Methodology¶

Currently, I am building with the JSONHTMLBuilder() by calling the Sphinx() class directly.

I then take the .fjson files and output them into .html format for Blogofile, prepending the metadata as the standard YAML.

Plans¶

Well, I am on a flight right now, and have to go straight to work, but when I get home I suppose I will post a git repo of what I have so far as a proof of concept.

I’d also like to convert my current wordpress blog to blogofile ASAP and put this on the internet.

The Sphinx Advantage¶

Some of you who are familiar with Blogofile might be wondering why I’m going through the effort of adding yet another wiki markup format to Blogofile when there’s already Markup and Textile (I believe).

I like Sphinx and am familiar with it
It will work great for doing technical writeups.
- Love the pygments integration (I know Blogofile has it)
- Cross-referencing other projects documented in Sphinx
- Including source files in postings instead of cutting & pasting snippets.
Footnotes
Easily extensible with custom directives

Before I start evangelizing it more, I will eat my own dogfood ;).

Here’s what some of this file looks like:

:title:         Hello World
:post_date:     2009/09/21 10:05:17
:tags:          blogofile
:categories:    Software
:author:        Mike Lewis

....

The Sphinx Advantage
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Some of you who are familiar with Blogofile might be wondering why I'm going
through the effort of adding yet another wiki markup format to Blogofile when
there's already Markup and Textile (I believe).

* I like Sphinx and am familiar with it
* It will work great for doing technical writeups.

  * Love the pygments integration (I know Blogofile has it)

....

Here's what some of this file looks like::

    :title:         Hello World
    :post_date:     2009/09/21 10:05:17
    :tags:          blogofile
    :categories:    Software

Pretty meta, huh?

Other Plans for my Blogofile¶

Albeit a ruby project, I am in love with SASS. If you’re not familiar, it’s pretty much programmable CSS. It almost makes CSS tolerable. That’s a bold claim I know, but try it.

With Compass, it’s pretty easy to integrate into most projects. I’m currently using it in a couple Pylons projects (blasphemy, I know).

It should only be a few minutes to throw it in here, but then I will be forced to style it.