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<!DOCTYPE html>
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<title>Autocento of the breakfast table | Autocento of the breakfast table</title>
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<h1 class="title">Autocento of the breakfast table</h1>
<h1 class="subtitle">process narrative</h1>
<div class="header-extra">
</div>
</header>
<section class="content prose">
<section id="hi.-my-name-is-case-duckworth.-this-is-my-thesis." class="level2">
<h2>Hi. My name is Case Duckworth. This is my thesis.</h2>
<p><em>Autocento of the breakfast table</em> is an inter/hypertextual exploration of the workings of inspiration, revision, and obsession. I’ve compiled this work over multiple years, and recently linked it all together to form a (hopefully) more cohesive whole. To make this easier than collating everything by hand, I’ve relied on a process that leverages open-source technologies to publish my work onto a web platform.</p>
</section>
<section id="process-steps" class="level2">
<h2>Process steps</h2>
<ol type="1">
<li>Write poems.</li>
<li>Convert to Markdown.
<ul>
<li>Markdown, originally by <a href="http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/">John Gruber</a>, is a lightweight markup language that allows me to focus on the <em>content</em> of my writing, knowing that I can work on the <em>presentation</em> later.</li>
<li>The original <code>markdown.pl</code> program is buggy and inconsistent with how it applies styles to markup. It also only works to convert text to HTML.</li>
<li>Because of these limitations, I’ve used John MacFarlane’s <a href="http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown">extended Markdown syntax</a>, which lets me write richer documents and programmatically compile my work into multiple formats.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Compile to HTML with Pandoc.
<ul>
<li><p>At first, I used this code in the shell to generate my HTML:</p>
<pre class="sourceCode bash"><code class="sourceCode bash"><span class="kw">for</span> <span class="kw">file</span> in *.txt<span class="kw">;</span> <span class="kw">do</span>
<span class="kw">pandoc</span> <span class="st">"</span><span class="ot">$file</span><span class="st">"</span> -f markdown -t html5 \
--template=template.html -o <span class="st">"</span><span class="ot">${file%</span>txt<span class="ot">}</span><span class="st">html"</span>
<span class="kw">done</span></code></pre>
but this proved tedious with time.</li>
<li>After a lot of experimenting with different scripting languages, I finally realized that <a href="https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html"><code>GNU make</code></a> would fit this task perfectly.</li>
<li>You can see my makefile <a href="https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/makefile">here</a>—it’s kind of a mess, but it does the job. See below for a more detailed explanation of the makefile.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Style the pages with CSS.
<ul>
<li>I use a pretty basic style for <em>Autocento</em>. You can see my stylesheet <a href="https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/style.css">here</a>.</li>
</ul></li>
<li>Use <a href="https://github.com">Github</a> to put them online.
<ul>
<li>Github uses <code>git</code> under the hood—a Version Control System developed for keeping track of large code projects.</li>
<li>My workflow with <code>git</code> looks like this:
<ul>
<li>Change files in the project directory—revise a poem, change the makefile, add a style, etc.</li>
<li>(If necessary, re-compile with <code>make</code>.)</li>
<li><code>git status</code> tells me which files have changed, which have been added, and if any have been deleted.</li>
<li><code>git add -A</code> adds all the changes to the <em>staging area</em>, or I can add individual files, depending on what I want to commit.</li>
<li><code>git commit -m "[message]"</code> commits the changes to git. This means they’re “saved”—if I do something I want to revert, I can <code>git revert</code> back to a commit and start again.</li>
<li><code>git push</code> pushes the changes to the <em>remote repository</em>—in this case, the Github repo that serves <a href="http://autocento.me" class="uri">http://autocento.me</a>.</li>
<li>Lather, rinse, repeat.</li>
</ul></li>
</ul></li>
<li>Write Makefile to extend build capabilities.
<ul>
<li>As of now, I’ve completed a <em><a href="hapax.html">Hapax legomenon</a></em> compiler, a <a href="makefile">back-link</a> compiler, and an updater for the <a href="trunk/lozenge.js">random link functionality</a> that’s on this site.</li>
<li>I’d like to build a compiler for the <a href="first-lines.html">Index of first lines</a> and <a href="common-titles.html">Index of common titles</a> once I have time.</li>
</ul></li>
</ol>
</section>
<section id="the-beauty-of-this-system" class="level2">
<h2>The beauty of this system</h2>
<ul>
<li>I can compile these poems into (almost) any format: <code>pandoc</code> supports a lot.</li>
<li>Once I complete the above process once, I can focus on revising my poems.</li>
<li>These poems are online for anyone to see and use for their own work.</li>
</ul>
</section>
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