12 ms·
If I'm wanting to write about something I want to write about that thing, not write about that thing in the midst of a bunch of extraneous fluff like header tag
by chownie 6y ago
If I'm wanting to write about something I want to write about that thing, not write about that thing in the midst of a bunch of extraneous fluff like header tags, script tags, CSS, etc.
The author's thoughts about layers of indirection are confusing to me, I'd actually take the comparison the other way. If I'm not using markdown plus a static site generator now I have to keep track of things like layout, styling, script tags, etc myself plus the actual writing I was intending on doing.
I used to have an extremely simple markdown server. It presented 2 types of page, an index and an article. The index simply read the /content directory on the server. Requesting any file under /content would render the markdown into the article page and affix a date and time from the .md file's metadata.
Takes <1 hour setup and means you never have to copy and paste random files or do whole site page transformations (as the author has admitted to in that very post) to clean your mishmash HTML beast.
- arkitaip 6y agoThe author suggests using a visual html editor and copying any code you need for layout, navigation, etc. You can't deny that's infinitely easier than rolling your own SSG and using markdown.
- chownie 6y agoAh, well in that case the note about layers of abstraction don't really apply very well. A full WYSIW(YG/YM) editor is not going to generate HTML you actually want to read or write. Otherwise we'd all be making sites in Microsoft Word given its ubiquity! :D
- nix0n 6y agoThe HTML that is generated by Seamonkey Composer is reasonably editable as plain source. (Actually it is much more pleasant than using exclusively Notepad, because the auto-indentation is reasonable.) However, Microsoft Word generates extremely bad HTML. Don't use it.
- dsego 6y agoLike the div soup react (or any other js framework) generates is any better. In any case, I don't understand the need for clean HTML if I don't have to read or write it. Which is supposedly true if I'm going to be using a wysiwyg editor or you know a web browser to read the actual content of the damn page and not its markup.
- mro_name 6y ago> I used to have what happened to it?
- chownie 6y agoThis was several years ago now, during my pre-university days. I lost access to my hosting and my domain due to lack of funds, dead hard drives (didn't use any versioning) etc. At this point I don't write about much, so I haven't revived it.