Gemtexter 1.1.0 - Let's Gemtext again

> Published at 2022-08-27T18:25:57+01:00

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 jgs  `"""""""""`

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.

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.

Input filter support

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)

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` :-)