Gemtexter 1.1.0 - Let's Gemtext again
Published at 2022-08-27T18:25:57+01:00
I proudly announce that I've released Gemtexter version 1.1.0. What is Gemtexter? It's my minimalist static site generator for Gemini Gemtext, HTML and Markdown written in GNU Bash.
https://codeberg.org/snonux/gemtexter
It has been around a year since I released the first version 1.0.0. Although, there aren't any groundbreaking changes, there have been a couple of smaller commits and adjustments. I was quite surprised that I received a bunch of feedback and requests about Gemtexter so it means that I am not the only person in the universe actually using it.
-=[ typewriter ]=- 1/98
.-------.
_|~~ ~~ |_
=(_|_______|_)=
|:::::::::|
|:::::::[]|
|o=======.|
jgs `"""""""""`
Table of Contents
What's new?
Automatic check for GNU version requirements
Gemtexter relies on the GNU versions of the tools grep, sed and date and it also requires the Bash shell in version 5 at least. That's now done in the check_dependencies() function:
check_dependencies () {
# At least, Bash 5 is required
local -i required_version=5
IFS=. read -ra version <<< "$BASH_VERSION"
if [ "${version[0]}" -lt $required_version ]; then
log ERROR "ERROR, \"bash\" must be at least at major version $required_version!"
exit 2
fi
# These must be the GNU versions of the commands
for tool in $DATE $SED $GREP; do
if ! $tool --version | grep -q GNU; then
log ERROR "ERROR, \"$tool\" command is not the GNU version, please install!"
exit 2
fi
done
}
Especially macOS users didn't read the README carefully enough to install GNU Grep, GNU Sed and GNU Date before using Gemtexter.
Backticks now produce inline code blocks in the HTML output
The Gemtext format doesn't support inline code blocks, but Gemtexter now produces inline code blocks (means, small code fragments can be placed in the middle of a paragraph) in the HTML output when the code block is enclosed with Backticks. There were no adjustments required for the Markdown output format, because Markdown supports it already out of the box.
Cache for Atom feed generation
The Bash is not the most performant language. Gemtexter already takes a couple of seconds only to generate the Atom feed for around two hand full of articles on my slightly underpowered Surface Go 2 Linux tablet. Therefore, I introduced a cache, so that subsequent Atom feed generation runs finish much quicker. The cache uses a checksum of the Gemtext .gmi file to decide whether anything of the content has changed or not.
Once your capsule reaches a certain size, it can become annoying to re-generate everything if you only want to preview the HTML or Markdown output of one single content file. The following will add a filter to only generate the files matching a regular expression:
./gemtexter --generate '.*hello.*'
Revamped git support
The Git support has been completely rewritten. It's now more reliable and faster too. Have a look at the README for more information.
Addition of htmlextras and web font support
The htmlextras folder now contains all extra files required for the HTML output format such as cascading style sheet (CSS) files and web fonts.
Sub-section support
It's now possible to define sub-sections within a Gemtexter capsule. For the HTML output, each sub-section can use its own CSS and web font definitions. E.g.:
The foo.zone main site
The notes sub-section (with different fonts)
More
Additionally, there were a couple of bug fixes, refactorings and overall improvements in the documentation made.
Overall I think it's a pretty solid 1.1.0 release without anything groundbreaking (therefore no major version jump). But I am happy about it.
E-Mail your comments to paul@nospam.buetow.org :-)
Other related posts are:
2021-04-24 Welcome to the Geminispace
2021-06-05 Gemtexter - One Bash script to rule it all
2022-08-27 Gemtexter 1.1.0 - Let's Gemtext again (You are currently reading this)
2023-03-25 Gemtexter 2.0.0 - Let's Gemtext again²
2023-07-21 Gemtexter 2.1.0 - Let's Gemtext again³
2024-10-02 Gemtexter 3.0.0 - Let's Gemtext again⁴
Back to the main site