path: root/2020/subtitles/emacsconf-2020--19-sharing-blogs-and-more-with-org-webring--brett-gilio.vtt

WEBVTT

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Hi, my name is Brett Gillio,

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and today I'll be sharing a project that

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several people and I have been working on

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for the past few months, called
org-webring.

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The essential idea behind org-webring

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is to take the power of creating a

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website with Org Mode

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and its built-in features to control

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HTML and XML output

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and utilize it to share blogs, git

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commits, or other rss or atom static
feed content

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to share directly with your audiences.

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My website is created entirely using

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Org Mode. I love the amount of

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flexibility it offers me while keeping

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everything quite simple.

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I am able to put information about

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myself, a blog,

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and my org-webring tool directly on on

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the home page using simple Org syntax.

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As you can see, I am currently displaying

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three posts on my website.

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The first is the Guix Day announcement,

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the second is a quarterly financial

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update from SourceHut,

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and the third is a post from

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Drew DeVault's blog. Drew DeVault,
by the way--

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his open ring is what helped inspire

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what is today org-webring.
All this information is

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gathered using a sort of manifest file

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that org-webring will use to acquire

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and place the information in the

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correct format

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according to your specification.

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additionally, you can see that the

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Guix Day announcement's post is pinned.

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Stylization is likewise controlled by
using CSS.

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You can add nice subtle color changes on

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mouse hover or control the size of the

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flexboxes, all using standard CSS.

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Let's examine a simple scenario of using
org-webring.

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After you have org-webring installed,

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you'll be able to create a manifest file

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that looks something like this.

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This particular manifest file is an

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example offered in the repository under

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the assets directory.

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Please feel free to utilize them as a

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starting point if you are interested in

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using org-webring.

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As you can see here, we are able to place

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an RSS or ATOM feed in this file and

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specify information about the feed we

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wish to produce.

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For example: the total number of items

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and the total number of entries per

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source item.

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Additionally, you're able to filter posts

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you feel would not be relevant to your
web ring.

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We can take this example file,

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run the dispatch and see the result.

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The web ring displays a proper summary

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set to a character limit you can specify.

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Additionally, all the links in the

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web ring are navigatable and

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will open in a new tab.

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That way, if someone wishes to
view the content,

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they simply need to

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click on the title or their source name.

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Now this particular example is not

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stylized because we have not given the

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website a CSS file to reference.

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Let's examine what is happening from

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behind the scenes a little bit.

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From inside of the Org Mode file,

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let's run the org-webring function.

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As you can see, it takes that XML file

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and processes it into the correct HTML.

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You will then be able to embed this

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Org function into another Org file

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to be able to display it on your website.

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Pretty neat. Let's look at
another example.

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On my website, we have an example of

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using org-webring to reply to another

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blog post.

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What I have here is a post from

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Drew DeVault's blog. It is showcased clearly at

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the top as a single entry,

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and you can see it is pinned.

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The pinning functionality ensures

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that this post is

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moved to the front of the

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hypothetical web ring

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and guaranteeing its visibility.

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This is then coupled with a
few changes, such as

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disabling the generation time

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(which would not be relevant to the
readers)

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and a change of the text
in the header

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to demonstrate it is indeed
used as a reply.

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An example of this is also provided in

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the assets directory.

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Last, we can use org-webring

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as a blog planet,

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which is one of my favorites. This takes

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after the Emacs Life planet, which I

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believe is moderated
by Sacha and others,

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as well as the Haskell and

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OCaml planets.

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A planet, for the uninitiated, is a

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curated form of content sharing

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about a set of topics.

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The Emacs Life, Haskell, and OCaml planets,

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as their names imply,

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cover Emacs, Haskell, and OCaml blogs
respectively.

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Likewise, my planet covers

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programming language theory

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and category theory, primarily.

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It works in essentially the same way as

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the org-webring. You provide it with a

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list of feeds that get parsed.

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However, unlike the web ring,

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the planet function has no limits

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on the number of entries per source,

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and the display number of posts is

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increased significantly.

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The syndicates or sources have their

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feeds shown visibly to users

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who may wish to fetch them.

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A planet is typically meant to be a

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standalone page and not something you

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would embed in another page like a
web ring.

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All this is provided under a single file

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in the org-webring package,

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as the code reuse is quite high.

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Aside from my own website, we can view

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the org-webring being used in neat

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context with varying stylizations.

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Here's a nice example

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from Mikhail Kirillov at w96k.ru,

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featuring a four symmetrical
flexbox layout,

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an appropriate Russian language

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time encoding, which can be also set

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in the org-webring manifest.

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Another is an example from

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Camilo Mesa Gaete (https://cmezagaete.cl/),

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using ox-hugo with org-webring and

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likewise correctly

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features the correct Spanish
time encoding.

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Last, my other website workircd.org

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shows the web ring being used

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in combination with Ocaml's tool
link Soupault,

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to fetch git logs for that project.

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You may obtain org-webring directly

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from SourceHut and add it to your
load-path.

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Additionally, you will need to obtain

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xmlgen.el, which is unfortunately
not yet on ELPA,

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although I have been trying to get this

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rectified so I do not have to rewrite

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org-webring's XML to HTML parser.

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Or if you're one of the cool kids using

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my favorite package manager, GNU Guix,

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you can obtain it like so.

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All of the documentation for

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org-webring is available

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on the SourceHut website or in the README

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file after you check it out
from the git tree.

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There are so many ways to

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customize org-webring,

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as there are just as many variables

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as there are parts and components

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to org-webring for you to change.

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All of this is able to be done simply

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from that same manifest file.

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Now, taking a moment to examine some of

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the org-webring code,

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you can see it is all done in the same

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Elisp that everybody else is used to.

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Now, admittedly, my Elisp is not as

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strong as probably somebody else's,

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so if you are an Elisp ninja,

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please feel free to

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send a contribution or a patch

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and tell me what I'm doing wrong.

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I am not going to be offended

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by that at all. I would love to

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see this code to improve.

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Otherwise, I don't think it's half bad,

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considering that my experience with

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Lisps is usually in Scheme.

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Me moving from Scheme to Elisp

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was not all that hard.

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Taking the syntax apart,

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we're able to see that we can

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fetch URLs, which are then

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parsed and filtered, sorted, and then

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kind of reverse-sorted, rather,

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to get you to the web ring result.

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All of this is then passed through

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different parts of the xmlgen.el

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functions which gets you that HTML

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that you saw earlier.

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org-webring is fully free software

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distributed under the GNU General Public

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License versions 3 or later.

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At your option, I love accepting patches

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and collaborating.

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I hope you will consider
using org-webring.

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You can contact me on

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Freenode, OFTC, or many other

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IRC networks at brettgillio,

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or email me at brettg@gnu.org.

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Thanks so much to Amin Bandali and the
EmacsConf organizers,

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and to you, the audience, thanks.