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---
title: Autocento of the breakfast table
subtitle: process narrative
id: process
genre: prose
project:
title: About Autocento
class: meta
...
## Hi. My name is Case Duckworth. This is my thesis.
_Autocento of the breakfast table_ 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.
## Process steps
1. Write poems.
2. Convert to Markdown.
- Markdown, originally by [John Gruber][], is a lightweight markup language that allows me to focus on the _content_ of my writing, knowing that I can work on the _presentation_ later.
- The original `markdown.pl` program is buggy and inconsistent with how it applies styles to markup. It also only works to convert text to HTML.
- Because of these limitations, I've used John MacFarlane's [extended Markdown syntax][], which lets me write richer documents and programmatically compile my work into multiple formats.
3. Compile to HTML with Pandoc.
- At first, I used this code in the shell to generate my HTML:
```bash
for file in *.txt; do
pandoc "$file" -f markdown -t html5 \
--template=template.html -o "${file%txt}html"
done
```
but this proved tedious with time.
- After a lot of experimenting with different scripting languages, I finally realized that [`GNU make`][] would fit this task perfectly.
- You can see my makefile [here][makefile]---it's kind of a mess, but it does the job. See below for a more detailed explanation of the makefile.
4. Style the pages with CSS.
- I use a pretty basic style for _Autocento_. You can see my stylesheet [here][stylesheet].
4. Use [Github][] to put them online.
- Github uses `git` under the hood---a Version Control System developed for keeping track of large code projects.
- My workflow with `git` looks like this:
- Change files in the project directory---revise a poem, change the makefile, add a style, etc.
- (If necessary, re-compile with `make`.)
- `git status` tells me which files have changed, which have been added, and if any have been deleted.
- `git add -A` adds all the changes to the _staging area_, or I can add individual files, depending on what I want to commit.
- `git commit -m "[message]"` commits the changes to git. This means they're "saved"---if I do something I want to revert, I can `git revert` back to a commit and start again.
- `git push` pushes the changes to the _remote repository_---in this case, the Github repo that serves <http://autocento.me>.
- Lather, rinse, repeat.
5. Write Makefile to extend build capabilities.
- As of now, I've completed a _[Hapax legomenon][]_ compiler, a [back-link][] compiler, and an updater for the [random link functionality][] that's on this site.
- I'd like to build a compiler for the [Index of first lines][] and [Index of common titles][] once I have time.
## The beauty of this system
- I can compile these poems into (almost) any format: `pandoc` supports a lot.
- Once I complete the above process once, I can focus on revising my poems.
- These poems are online for anyone to see and use for their own work.
[John Gruber]: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/
[extended Markdown syntax]: http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#pandocs-markdown
[`GNU make`]: https://www.gnu.org/software/make/manual/make.html
[makefile]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/makefile
[stylesheet]: https://github.com/duckwork/autocento/blob/gh-pages/style.css
[Github]: https://github.com
[Hapax legomenon]: hapax.html
[back-link]: makefile
[random link functionality]: trunk/lozenge.js
[Index of first lines]: first-lines.html
[Index of common titles]: common-titles.html
|
