[ANN] thi.ng/org-spec template for tech specs & HTML export theme

[ANN] thi.ng/org-spec template for tech specs & HTML export theme

[Karsten Schmidt]

Hi everyone,

this is my first post to this list, but I've been using org-mode daily
for the past 3.5 years and can't imagine living without anymore
(professionally). Thanks for bringing so much joy to my job! :)

My main use case for org-mode has been literate programming[1] and
recently also writing lots of technical specification docs, for which
I believe org-mode is *perfectly* suited.

To give a little back to this amazing group of people, I've just
published a skeleton template for writing tech docs and publishing
them as HTML.

GH project: http://thi.ng/org-spec
Demo: http://demo.thi.ng/org-spec

The template demonstrates the following features:

- Inline, text-based diagramming via Ditaa, Graphviz & PlantUML
- Hyperlink abbreviations (incl. presets for GitHub, RFC, W3C, Wikipedia)
- Section status flags, tags & custom properties
- Tables
- Named section IDs for internal x-refs
- Footnotes
- Automatically updating fields (e.g. publication date)
- Automatic updating of document changelog (using selective git commits)
- Beautiful, minimal, responsive CSS theme with print support (also
for PDF generation)
- Basic syntax highlighting of code blocks

Hope some of you find this useful! PRs are welcome!

Best, K.

[1] Several Clojure projects in my thi.ng collection have been
developed exclusively in org-mode: http://thi.ng/fabric,
http://thi.ng/geom, http://thi.ng/trio to name a few...

-- 
Karsten Schmidt
http://thi.ng | http://postspectacular.com | http://toxiclibs.org

Re: [ANN] thi.ng/org-spec template for tech specs & HTML export theme

[Kaushal Modi]

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On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 8:55 AM Karsten Schmidt <info@toxi.co.uk> wrote:

>
> To give a little back to this amazing group of people, I've just
> published a skeleton template for writing tech docs and publishing
> them as HTML.
>
> GH project: http://thi.ng/org-spec
> Demo: http://demo.thi.ng/org-spec


Thanks Karsten! I had a look through those and it looks awesome! I think
they serve as very good examples in general on how to use org for technical
documentation.

I yet have to try out printing PDF from the browser using your style.css. I
generally rely on the org exporter to generate both HTML and PDF. What
limitations did you face when using the org latex exporter for generating
the PDF?
-- 

Kaushal Modi

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Re: [ANN] thi.ng/org-spec template for tech specs & HTML export theme

[Karsten Schmidt]

Thanks Kaushal! :)

I also think that we generally need more examples showing how flexible
& powerful org-mode is for these use cases. The majority raves about
Markdown, but for me it just lacks a ton of features I've become so
accustomed to w/ org-mode, especially when it comes to writing and
managing larger docs (i.e. the latest tech spec I've been working on
is 9000+ words) and dozens of diagrams (all text based!)

Re: PDF export - for me going the route via HTML is just easier & more
time saving (can control important print features via a few lines of
CSS). Plus I don't need to install 2.5GB of MacTex :) Also, the
generated PDF looks same as HTML, has hyperlinks etc. Haven't tried w/
MathJax yet, though...

Expect a few more updates over the coming weeks:
- move to SASS for style sheets, for easier re-skinning via variables
- improve TOC
- add back-to-top links
- add more diagram examples (incl. data extraction from tables)
- add optional support for highlight.js

Cheers!

On 1 August 2016 at 23:35, Kaushal Modi <kaushal.modi@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 31, 2016 at 8:55 AM Karsten Schmidt <info@toxi.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>>
>> To give a little back to this amazing group of people, I've just
>> published a skeleton template for writing tech docs and publishing
>> them as HTML.
>>
>> GH project: http://thi.ng/org-spec
>> Demo: http://demo.thi.ng/org-spec
>
>
> Thanks Karsten! I had a look through those and it looks awesome! I think
> they serve as very good examples in general on how to use org for technical
> documentation.
>
> I yet have to try out printing PDF from the browser using your style.css. I
> generally rely on the org exporter to generate both HTML and PDF. What
> limitations did you face when using the org latex exporter for generating
> the PDF?
> --
>
> Kaushal Modi



-- 
Karsten Schmidt
http://postspectacular.com | http://thi.ng | http://toxiclibs.org

Re: [ANN] thi.ng/org-spec template for tech specs & HTML export theme

[Adam Porter]

That looks really nice, thanks for sharing.  The automatic changelog
from last git tag is nifty.