* Steve Kemp <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [080331 08:56]: > On Mon Mar 31, 2008 at 00:37:14 -0500, Russell L. Harris wrote: > > > Regarding alternatives to Blosxom: Blosxom is written in Perl. A > > clone (which since has taken on a life of its own) is Pyblosxom, which > > is written in Python. Both are CGI scripts. > > If you're not accepting comments, or not immediately at least, > you might prefer something which outputs static HTML to your > site, instead of a CGI. > > For example ikiwiki can do this, or my 'chronicle' package.
I am aware that Blosxom/Pyblosxom can do static output, but I don't understand the implications of static versus dynamic. This morning it occurred to me that a major pain in blogging is the necessity of (1) switching between typesetter's quotation marks and typewriter-style quotation marks and (2) removing embedded linefeeds before handing off the blog to WordPress. The switching comes about because I prefer to compose in LaTeX mode in XEmacs -- the mode I use for articles for the web site. (I could customize LaTeX text mode, but I haven't had the time.) And it also occurred to me that I already am using HeVeA to automatically provide a HTML version of each website article. On my web site, the articles (which often run twenty pages and have complex formatting, including footnotes) are posted in PDF format to facilitate printing. But requests from visually-impaired visitors prompted me to add an HTML of each article, so that the visitor can use his browser to enlarge the text. Now, Blosxom was intended to serve posts with HTML formatting (typically rudimentary and hand-coded). With about a day's effort, I can put together a pair of LaTeX and HeVeA class definitions suitable for the blog. By using LaTeX and xdvi, I can view a typeset version of the blog post as I compose it. And HeVeA automatically generates the HTML version of the post for Blosxom to serve, taking care of the switch from typesetter quotation marks to typewriter-style quotation marks. Like LaTeX, HeVeA doesn't mind embedded linefeeds. The beauty of this approach is that, if I subsequently decide to expand a blog post into a web site article, no alterations are required. I simply lift the text #from the blog template and drop it into an article template. Moreover, no alteration of formatting is necessary for headings and for items such as bulleted or numbered lists. Finally, virtually no additional effort or complexity, I can create a PDF version of each blog post, which solves the problem of printing out blog posts (a matter to which few blog authors give consideration). RLH -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
