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authorBradley Taunt <bt@btxx.org>2024-02-02 12:39:46 -0500
committerBradley Taunt <bt@btxx.org>2024-02-02 12:39:46 -0500
commita27fa0c2e26eb2e30e220fd68cd5ee910474b602 (patch)
tree25e9d3ba8bbfcdf785f3c5a3e11764de24bacb3a /posts
Initial commit to new cgit platformHEADmaster
Diffstat (limited to 'posts')
-rw-r--r--posts/create-your-own-shinobi-website.txt121
-rw-r--r--posts/full-posts-rss-readers.txt111
-rw-r--r--posts/introducing-shinobi-website.txt61
-rw-r--r--posts/patch-1.txt85
-rw-r--r--posts/patch-2.txt39
-rw-r--r--posts/patch-3.txt24
-rw-r--r--posts/shinobi-sourcehut.txt46
7 files changed, 487 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/posts/create-your-own-shinobi-website.txt b/posts/create-your-own-shinobi-website.txt
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+++ b/posts/create-your-own-shinobi-website.txt
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+Thu, 21 Apr 2022
+SIMPLE GUIDE FOR CREATING YOUR OWN SHINOBI.WEBSITE
+
+Learn how to setup your own Shinobi site without the need for any
+technical background.
+
+I'm going to keep this article as streamlined as possible. This post
+assumes you understand _what_ a shinobi website is and will therefore
+skip reiterating that. Instead we will break things down into basic
+step-by-step instructions.
+
+
+STEP 1
+------
+
+Create a new folder (where you think it is best on your system). This
+will contain all the files for our shinobi website. Name it what ever
+you like.
+
+
+STEP 2
+------
+
+Download the following project:
+
+https://git.sr.ht/~tdarb/shinobi-script
+
+
+STEP 3
+------
+
+Edit the following content in the newly created "script.sh" to align
+with your own settings. (ie: YOUR-DOMAIN would be
+"yourcustomdomain.com") Feel free to use any text editor that works
+best for you.
+
+1. YOUR-DOMAIN
+2. YOUR-EMAIL (YOUR-NAME)
+3. YOUR-BLOG-TITLE
+4. YOUR-BLOG-DESCRIPTION
+5. YOUR-COPYRIGHT-INFO
+
+*Important*: You might not have a domain setup currently or plan to use
+the one generated by Netlify Drop below. That's okay! You can always
+come back to this step after the domain is live, change it and re-run
+everything again to update!
+
+
+STEP 4
+------
+
+Next, look for the folder named "posts". This will contain all your
+blog posts going forward. (It also contains a couple dummy posts for
+reference)
+
+
+STEP 5
+------
+
+Write your first blog post! Create a new text file inside the "posts"
+sub-folder (ie: my-awesome-post.txt). Be sure to structure the first 4
+lines the same as below: (Pay attention to the blank space between the
+title and post description!)
+
+> Thu, 21 Apr 2022
+> YOUR BLOG POST TITLE
+>
+> This is my short and sweet blog post description
+
+
+STEP 6
+------
+
+If you are happy with your article then that means it's time to
+generate your site! Open a terminal app in your system (Windows, Mac,
+Linux - doesn't matter) and navigate to your new website folder by
+typing the following:
+
+cd path/to/your/blog/folder
+
+
+STEP 7
+------
+
+Now run the bash script to generate the "feed.xml" file automatically:
+
+bash script.sh > feed.xml
+
+
+STEP 8
+------
+
+Now to host your new website! For this tutorial we are going to use
+Netlify Drop for simplicity and ease-of-use. Go to
+https://app.netlify.com/drop and then drag-and-drop your website folder
+directly into the website.
+
+You'll get a ".netlify.app" based URL, unless you decide to implement a
+custom domain (which is easy to do following Netlify's instructions).
+
+Now you can share your "subdomain.netlify.app/feed.xml" with the world
+and your readers can subscribe via RSS!
+
+
+WHAT ABOUT NEW POSTS OR UPDATES?
+--------------------------------
+
+By getting a free Netlify account you can continue to re-upload the
+website folder when you make changes or add new articles. Easy, right?
+
+Good luck on your own shinobi websites!
+
+
+P.S. Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions via
+shinobi.web@protonmail.com. I'll try to respond as quick as I can.
+Please be patient!
+
+
+
+
+
diff --git a/posts/full-posts-rss-readers.txt b/posts/full-posts-rss-readers.txt
new file mode 100644
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+++ b/posts/full-posts-rss-readers.txt
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+Fri, 06 May 2022
+FULL POSTS ARE NOW RENDERED INSIDE RSS READERS
+
+Your subscribers can now read your full articles without leaving the
+comfort of their RSS readers.
+
+I have finally succeeded after fighting with properly rendering full
+post content directly _inside_ RSS readers. I struggled with this
+implementation far longer than I'd like to admit. Although, that's to
+be expected with my caveman knowledge of RSS feeds and my simple monkey
+brain.
+
+But here we are! We made it.
+
+
+INSPIRATION
+-----------
+
+The thought of rendering all the content within users' RSS readers was
+always something I wanted for the initial launch of Shinobi Website. It
+was taking me a while to understand the layout issues caused by
+articles being pure plain text, so I ended up giving up for version
+"1.0".
+
+Then fellow web-minimalist Matthew Graybosch kindly reached out and
+showed off his own beautifully crafted shinobi website[0]. Browsing
+through his site and articles I quickly realized a few rendering woes
+of my own:
+
+1. Having set the reading length to 72, I was hurting the reading
+experience for mobile users
+2. Matthew was doing a lot more cool things on his site (D&D style
+tables, separating specific feeds into their own directories)
+
+Shortly after this exchange I was contacted by another plain-text web
+enthusiast, Koray Er[1]. They were inspired to start building out
+their own Shinobi Website. This is where the question was brought up
+regarding full post rendering:
+
+> i want the entire content in my rss reader - not just one line. the
+best i could do was put $(tail -n +4 $file) in the description. that
+works, but without line breaks. is it possible to fix that in rss.sh? i
+don't want to change the txt - it's so pure.
+
+This was the final straw. I _needed_ to get this working in _some_
+capacity.
+
+
+CDATA TO THE RESCUE
+-------------------
+
+I played around with converting plain text to HTML and pasting it
+inside the XML at build time. This created more problems than it fixed.
+But finally, after roughly 2 hours of going down multiple rabbit holes
+of failure, I mashed together a few concepts from everyone's trusty
+copy/paste site: stackoverflow.
+
+Take a look at the newly updated shell script here:
+
+> https://shinobi.website/script.sh
+
+The only change I have made is inside the `description` tag within the
+individual `item` elements. Take a look if you're interested.
+
+Wait, what the heck that CDATA junk, you might be asking?
+
+> CDATA is defined as blocks of text that are not parsed by the parser,
+but are otherwise recognized as markup.
+
+After that we use `sed` to swap out any newlines with HTML line break
+elements. Nothing crazy there.
+
+NOTE:
+As you may have noticed on the main page of this project, the `rss.sh`
+code snippet has been replaced with a direct link to a new `script.sh`.
+Those wishing to implement this new style of formatting will need to
+make the shell changes manually.
+
+
+CAVEATS
+-------
+
+Please note that if you are planning to render your content this way
+there are minor things to look out for.
+
+1. Pasting code examples is a big no-no. The content will be mangled
+and the reader will try to render example snippets as HTML elements.
+Your best bet is to link directly to example files elsewhere in your
+directory.
+
+^ THIS IS NO LONGER TRUE. See details below.[2]
+
+2. This may not work for every single RSS Reader. I can't test every
+application out there in the wild nor can I double check different
+operating systems. All I know is this renders fine for me on macOS
+using NetNewsWire.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+---------
+[0]: https://matthewgraybosch.com/
+[1]: https://korayer.de/
+[2]: This issue has been fixed thanks to Matthew Graybosch's excellent
+patch. See patch notes here:
+https://git.sr.ht/~tdarb/shinobi-script/log?from=7e2f8bd312d648ff1c8d3cf
+dc747d2e5634100d7#log-7e2f8bd312d648ff1c8d3cfdc747d2e5634100d7
+
+
+Thanks for reading my humble blog (maybe directly in your RSS reader
+this time too!),
+-- Brad \ No newline at end of file
diff --git a/posts/introducing-shinobi-website.txt b/posts/introducing-shinobi-website.txt
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+Thu, 14 Apr 2022
+INTRODUCING SHINOBI.WEBSITE
+
+What is a shinobi website?
+
+I have finally been blessed with enough extra free-time to launch my
+small shinobi.website "system" into the wild! My hope is that others
+take inspiration from it and even start shinobi blogs/sites of their
+own.
+
+
+SHINOBI.WEBSITE EXPLAINED
+-------------------------
+
+Quoting the homepage of https://shinobi.website:
+
+> A shinobi website is a text-based, RSS focused blogging "system"
+
+More details about the naming decision, running the simple bash script
+and properly writing plain text blog posts can be found on the
+homepage. For this specific post I more of less want to focus on the
+initial "launch" of the product and what the future holds for this URL
+as a whole.
+
+
+WHAT TO EXPECT
+--------------
+
+If you're reading this post, you have shown interest in this project.
+First off, I would like to thank you for taking the time subscribing to
+this feed or sneakily finding the direct link URL to this post. You are
+a true web shinobi.
+
+As for articles posted here; they will cover topics about minimalism,
+open source software, writing prompts, HTML/CSS hacks and video game
+reviews. This place is an ever-evolving project, I'm not going to
+restrict myself too much by hard constraints or limited topics.
+
+For my next set of posts, I plan to cover a more step-by-step tutorial
+on setting up your own shinobi website through Netlify (for free!).
+After that I have a couple other concepts to follow-up with:
+
+1. A clean Sublime Text setup for writing plain text posts
+2. Easy steps to de-clutter and minimize your digital life
+3. Switching over from a static site generator to a shinobi website
+
+
+EXCITED TO INSPIRE
+------------------
+
+I'm excited to see if this project inspires even *one* person to do the
+same. If it gets enough traction, I'll need to post a list or "club"
+somewhere for the shinobi community to show-off their work. It will be
+an interesting endeavour to watch grow and I'm looking forward to
+sharing the experience with you, dear reader!
+
+
+Thanks for reading my humble blog,
+-- Brad
+
+
diff --git a/posts/patch-1.txt b/posts/patch-1.txt
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+++ b/posts/patch-1.txt
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+Sun, 15 May 2022
+FIRST MAJOR PATCH AND QOL IMPROVEMENTS
+
+The main shinobi script has received its first external patch!
+
+It's getting just past 10PM on this stormy Sunday night, but I have an
+urge to share this post now instead of waiting for next week.
+Afterwards I'll be going to bed before the start of a new week.
+
+If you've been following along, you might have noticed a pretty solid
+patch has been added to the core shinobi script project:
+
+https://git.sr.ht/~tdarb/shinobi-script
+
+Special shout out to Matthew Graybosch[0] for putting together these
+improvements and working towards a more consistent experience across
+all RSS readers.
+
+
+THE CHANGES AT A GLANCE
+-----------------------
+
+In a nutshell:
+
+- text inside the CDATA tag is now wrapped with <pre> tags
+- <pre> tag has inline CSS to specify reasonable wrapping
+- tail command to retrieve post text now pipes into sed to escape HTML
+tags.
+- added test posts
+- added makefile for local testing
+
+Please take a look at the changes directly in the official patch
+notes[1]. Take notice of some of the new folders/files included with
+the default project. You'll also see updated instructions in the README
+to help with testing and local development.
+
+
+QUALITY OF LIFE
+---------------
+
+In addition to the first major patch, I've included basic styling to
+properly render the RSS feed directory in supported browsers. To see it
+in action, simply check out:
+
+https://shinobi.website/feed.xml
+
+The styles are included in the new `rss.css` file of the shinobi
+project. The current layout is taken from Len Falken's main
+directory[2]. Feel free to change this to however you see fit! I've
+kept them consistent with the remainder of the project, but there is
+nothing stopping you from including things like XSLT.
+
+To reflect these changes, I've updated some of the details found in the
+original "SIMPLE GUIDE FOR CREATING YOUR OWN SHINOBI.WEBSITE"[3]
+
+
+TESTING, TESTING, TESTING
+-------------------------
+
+I'm trying my best to test every RSS reader available to me. My main
+machine is running macOS and my phone iOS, thus making me somewhat
+limited in my access to other OS-specific RSS applications. Even still,
+I've added a growing list to the project README documenting readers
+that have been tested, along with their support "grade". Feel free to
+include your own testing in tickets or patches on your own!
+
+That is really all there is to say. Enjoy your week!
+
+
+LINKS
+-----
+
+[0]: https://matthewgraybosch.com
+[1]:
+https://git.sr.ht/~tdarb/shinobi-script/log?from=7e2f8bd312d648ff1c8d3cf
+dc747d2e5634100d7#log-7e2f8bd312d648ff1c8d3cfdc747d2e5634100d7
+[2]: http://len.falken.directory
+[3]: https://shinobi.website/posts/create-your-own-shinobi-website.txt
+
+
+***
+
+Thanks for reading,
+-- Brad
+
diff --git a/posts/patch-2.txt b/posts/patch-2.txt
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+++ b/posts/patch-2.txt
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+Tue, 31 May 2022
+CUSTOMIZED RSS FEED WITH XSLT
+
+I've finally merged in the latest changes from the `patch-2` branch
+into `master`. This patch includes a fairly decent update to the
+shinobi structure as a whole:
+
+- Set all configuration options as variables for easier editing and
+updating
+- Customized XML feed to match "plain text" style (in supported
+browsers)
+- Option to wrap all posts at a 72 character limit for improved
+readability in the browser (commented out by default)
+
+
+THE NEW RSS FEED "LOOK"
+-----------------------
+
+For demo purposes, simply visit the following link in any supported
+browser to see the XSLT in action:
+
+https://shinobi.website/feed.xml
+
+
+WRAPPING PLAIN TEXT
+-------------------
+
+You now have the ability to have shinobi automatically wrap your plain
+text files at a 72 character limit. Since this is _slightly_ more
+advanced, you will need to perform some minor edits to the `script.sh`
+file itself. Don't worry - I've updated the main README file with
+detailed instructions on how to set this up under the section "ADVANCED
+SETTING: WRAPPING PLAIN TEXT":
+
+https://git.sr.ht/~tdarb/shinobi-script
+
+
+That's all for now. Enjoy the rest of your week!
+- Brad
diff --git a/posts/patch-3.txt b/posts/patch-3.txt
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+++ b/posts/patch-3.txt
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+Tue, 14 Jun 2022
+INTERACTIVE LINKS INSIDE XML FEEDS
+
+Today I pushed out a minor change to include clickable, interactive
+links inside the generated XML feed. This isn't anything groundbreaking
+but greatly improves the user experience for those visiting the RSS
+file directly in their browser. The full changes can be found in the
+official repo for this project.
+
+You can see a live example on this very website:
+
+https://shinobi.website/feed.xml
+
+and also on my own personal website:
+
+https://tdarb.org/feeds/posts.xml
+
+I plan to do a larger, more detailed write-up on how this is
+accomplished on my personal blog within the coming days. Subscribed to
+that feed if that is something you might be interested in.
+
+Thanks for reading,
+- Brad
+
diff --git a/posts/shinobi-sourcehut.txt b/posts/shinobi-sourcehut.txt
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+++ b/posts/shinobi-sourcehut.txt
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+Mon, 09 May 2022
+THE SHINOBI SCRIPT IS NOW AVAILABLE ON SOURCEHUT
+
+The basic shell script that builds shinobi websites is now on sourcehut
+and licensed under MIT.
+
+Like the title of this post says: the shinobi build script is now
+available on sourcehut:
+
+> https://git.sr.ht/~tdarb/shinobi-script
+
+The original downloadable `script.sh` file will now redirect to this
+repo to ensure users are provided the most up-to-date version. The last
+thing I want is conflicting scripts being used out in the wild!
+
+
+IMPROVEMENTS WELCOME
+--------------------
+
+I wanted to have this available to the public from day one but life has
+been busy! Special shout-out to `prx` for suggesting QoL improvements
+to the script[0]. I haven't tried implementing these suggested changes
+yet, if anyone wants to beat me to it...go for it! This is why the
+shinobi script needs to be more in the open. It can improve over time
+with the help of people _much_ smarter than myself!
+
+
+WHY SOURCEHUT AND NOT GITHUB?
+-----------------------------
+
+I like to support competition and help reduce growing monopolies.
+Github is great for what it is but I have enough projects "stuck" on
+that platform. It's nice to diversify your git hosting!
+
+
+LINKS
+-----
+
+[0]: https://si3t.ch/Logiciel-libre/atom-awk.xhtml
+
+
+***
+
+That's all folks, thanks for reading!
+-- Brad
+