First, we simply need to clone the fediverse-share-button repo. I cloned it next to my blog directory to make it a little simpler to move files into place, like this:

cp -r ./fediverse-share-button/fediverse-share-button ./notroot-blog/files

That's it for now! Next, I'll show you how to incorporate those files into your Nikola builds.

I referred to this "Random Geekery" blog post to figure out how to tweak Nikola themes and templates to include my fancy new share button.

Boiling down my "learnings" (barf) for the reader, here's what I did.

Rather than tweaking the installed theme – in my case, the hack theme – we want to inherit from it, and make the changes to our own theme templates.

First, I created a new theme called notroot, based on hack, like this:

nikola theme --new notroot --parent hack

Then, I changed my theme and disabled bundling in Nikola's conf.py, like this:

THEME = "notroot"
USE_BUNDLES = False

Then, I copied the post template into my new notroot theme, like this:

nikola theme --copy-template post.tmpl

To make sure my new notroot theme was exactly the same as hack, I did a quick built and served it locally, like this:

nikola build
nikola serve

Perfect! Nothing changed… yet.

Next, I opened the aforementioned post.tmpl file in Emacs, and more or less followed Stefan's instructions. However, because we're working with a Nikola template (Mako), there was a little more to it.

My post.tmpl has a block called extra_head, so that's where I added the CSS link. It should look sorta like this afterwards:

<%block name="extra_head">
<!-- ... the rest of 'extra_head' ... -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/fediverse-share-button/styles.min.css">
</%block>

Note that, unlike Stefan's instructions, we use an absolute path here /, not a relative path ./, to the fediverse-share-button/ directory. That's because Nikola will move things around when it builds, and because we just plopped fediverse-share-button into the files/ directory, it will be at the top level, next to assets/ and images/.

To include the <script> tag pointing to the Javascript for our share button, I had to add an extra_js block to the bottom of post.tmpl. It also uses absolute paths, like this:

<%block name="extra_js">
<script src="/fediverse-share-button/script.min.js" defer class="fsb-script"></script>
</%block>

Then, finally, I was able to include the actual button <form> element. I chose the bottom of the post, above the navigation. The whole content block, after my changes, looks like this (comments added for emphasis):

<%block name="content">
<article class="post-${post.meta('type')} h-entry hentry postpage" itemscope="itemscope" itemtype="http://schema.org/Article">
    ${pheader.html_post_header()}
    <div class="e-content entry-content" itemprop="articleBody text">
    ${post.text()}
    </div>
    <aside class="postpromonav">

	<!-- START fediverse-share-button form -->

	<form class="fsb-prompt">
	    <label>Share with the fediverse</label>
	    <div class="fsb-input-group mb-3">
		<span class="fsb-input-group-text">https://</span>
		<input required
		       type="text"
		       name="fediverse-domain"
		       placeholder="mastodon.social"
		       class="fsb-input fsb-domain"
		       aria-label="Amount (to the nearest dollar)">
		<button class="fsb-button"
			type="submit"><img src="/fediverse-share-button/icons/mastodon.svg"
					   class="fsb-icon"></span>Share</button>
	    </div>
	    <p class="fsb-support-note fsb-d-none">
		This server does not support sharing. Please visit <a class="fsb-support-note-link"
								      target="_blank"
								      href=""></a>.
	    </p>
	</form>

	<!-- END form -->

    <nav>
    ${helper.html_tags(post)}
    ${helper.html_pager(post)}
    </nav>
    </aside>
    % if not post.meta('nocomments') and site_has_comments:
	<section id="comment-section" class="comments hidden-print">
	<h2>${messages("Comments")}</h2>
	${comments.comment_form(post.permalink(absolute=True), post.title(), post._base_path)}
	</section>
    % endif
    ${math.math_scripts_ifpost(post)}
</article>
${comments.comment_link_script()}
</%block>

Then, once again, I built it and served it locally to check my work.

Success! Except…

Except the CSS was all screwy. The share button itself was enormous, due to how hack CSS treats all <img> tags, and it was all left-justified, when my tags right below are centered.

Let's fix that!

It turned out to be dead simple. I inspected the classes in the browser, fixed it so it looked right, then copied those styles out of files/fediverse-share-button/styles.css and into my own files/assets/css/custom.css file. Then I added the attributes needed to fix things.

To fix the enormous button, I just added !important to max-width:

.fsb-icon {
  max-width: 1rem !important;
  margin-right: 0.5rem;
  vertical-align: baseline;
}

To get the whole shebang centered, I modified .fsb-prompt to add auto margins on the right and left, which effectively centered the <form> itself. I also had the form center text. It looks like this, now:

.fsb-prompt{
  max-width: 500px;
  margin-top: 52px;
  margin-left: auto;
  margin-right: auto;
  text-align: center;
}

And voila! Beautiful!

Once I was satisfied with the look and functionality, I was ready for the final build and deployment.

First, though, I needed to minify the CSS changes that I had made. Stefan describes this, as well – for both JS and CSS – but here's exactly what I did:

npm install minify -g
minify files/fediverse-share-button/styles.css > files/fediverse-share-button/styles.min.css

Finally I was ready to build and deploy, as usual, from within Emacs.

• M-x nikola-build to build.
• M-! nikola deploy to deploy.

Next steps are three-fold:

1. Publish this blog post to my blog.
2. Once published, I will click the Fediverse Share Button and share to my Fediverse account.
3. Then I will get the article ID of that Fediverse note, and add it to the meta for this post. Then I'll rebuild and redeploy. This will enable the "Comments" section, and replies to my Fediverse note will appear as comments on this blog post!

It's like frickin' magic, baby!

This example is from Org Mode's official documentation, though I've changed the output path for Nikola building.

First I'll activate a Python venv with matplotlib pre-installed

import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
fig=plt.figure(figsize=(3,2))
plt.plot([1,3,2])
fig.tight_layout()

fname = '../images/myfig.png'
plt.savefig(fname)
# fname[1:] # return this to org-mode

Then make an HTML link (on Org export) into images, like this:

[[./images/myfig.png]]

Which will then display the image after Nikola builds, like this:

Voila! We plotted a chart! If I change the Python code, and re-build, I'll get a different chart.

Diagrams are different from plots and charts. They aren't strictly mathematical. Instead, we need to look to other possible solutions.

Emacs package sources offer several options, but the one I have experience with is ditaa.

+--------+   +-------+    +-------+
|        | --+ ditaa +--> |       |
|  Text  |   +-------+    |diagram|
|Document|   |!magic!|    |       |
|     {d}|   |       |    |       |
+---+----+   +-------+    +-------+
    :                         ^
    |       Lots of work      |
    +-------------------------+

Then make an HTML link like before:

Voila! We made a diagram!

I also tried including LaTeX equations and inline LaTeX, to no avail. Even with the default MathJax, it seems that Nikola does not do a pure Emacs Org Mode export to HTML, and I was unable to get LaTeX working.

Which brings up the point I'd like to conclude with:

Nikola + Org Mode is a workable solution that lets us use most Org Mode features out-of-the-box, like tables, executable code blocks, and the like.

However, when it comes to bells and whistles, it falls a little short of pure Org Mode HTML export.

• Having to create a separate HTML link for an image is annoying, but Nikola makes so much else easier that I can probably overlook it. If I was doing a pure Org Mode export, Emacs would create the image link for me.
• The ditaa integration was awkward, at best. I basically had to do an Org Mode HTML export to the ../images directory, then add an HTML link. If it was pure Org Mode export, Emacs would create the image link for me.
• No Emacs-based LaTeX. In fact, I couldn't get LaTeX to display at all! Even after I added the mathjax tag to the post's meta file, as described in the Nikola Handbook.

For now, I'll keep using Nikola, but my next iteration of this blog might be pure Org Mode, with HTML templates.

Here are the things you'll need for this tutorial. I'll show you some steps.

• Emacs: Obviously. With Org Mode.
• Git: Git and a private Git repository.
• Nikola: Nikola is a static site generator, with an orgmode plugin.
• nikola.el: nikola.el is an Emacs package that wraps Nikola functions.
• Webserver: This setup assumes you have your own private webserver for deployment, but Nikola has a test server.

From Nikola's installation instructions, slightly tweaked to use v8.2.4:

python3 -m venv nikola-env
cd nikola-env
bin/python -m pip install -U pip setuptools wheel
bin/python -m pip install 'Nikola[extras]==8.2.4'

You can now use Nikola by launching the script directly:

bin/nikola

Or you can activate the environment before working with Nikola and use the nikola command:

source bin/activate
nikola

Now we can write a blog post, like this one, in Emacs org-mode. Super easy!

Just do M-x nikola-new-post to create a new posts, or M-x nikola-new-page to create a new page, like my "About Us" page.

Emacs will give you an *.org file, but will also create a *.meta file. Most things will be preset, but you will probably want to add tags. Here's the meta file for this blog post:

.. title: How I Made This Site (This Time)
.. slug: how-i-made-this-site-(this-time)
.. date: 2024-04-07 18:29:06
.. tags: nikola,emacs,org-mode,blogging,tutorial

And here's a screenshot of me writing this post! Talk about "meta" heheh:

The nikola-deploy command is, unfortunately, not working for me. I have forked this old project, and at some point I'll try to fix it, but for now, I just use the shell command in Emacs.

Do M-! nikola deploy to upload your site to your webserver.

Then browse to your new blog. If everything is working, you should be live!

Once you get Nikola and nikola.el working, this is a very easy way to blog, if you're an Emacs person. It's intuitive and highly configurable.

For example, Nikola does it's own syntax highlighting, but I'll be adding something like highlight.js down the road. I can add comments sections, and I've barely touched the possible Nikola add-ons.

If you're an Emacs person, I think this is one of the more flexible, but robust, SSG integrations out there. I, too, love the idea of publishing natively using only Emacs, but one of the great features of Emacs is also its ability to compose cleanly with other commandline tools.

First, install and configure restclient and ob-restclient in your Emacs.

Then, create a new file in Emacs, called jsonplaceholder.org. At the top of this file, include the following header information (obviously change the author and email):

#+title: JSON Placeholder API Documentation
#+author: Joseph Edwards VIII
#+email: foobar@example.com

#+startup: indent
#+export_file_name: index.html
#+options: num:nil ^:nil H:5 toc:2

#+setupfile: https://fniessen.github.io/org-html-themes/org/theme-readtheorg.setup

Let's talk about this header a bit, since it's not immediately apparent what's going on.

The top section is self-explanatory. The second section just tells Emacs to display org-mode with indents, specifies the name of the file to export to, and controls the way that section headings and the table of contents will be displayed.

The final section loads the HTML template setupfile to use when exporting to HTML. In practice, I also add a number of #+html_head: items to customize the ReadTheOrg theme CSS.

Now let's document our first request and response. JSON Placeholder provides six resources, and routes for all HTTP methods. We'll start with the /posts resource.

In your jsonplaceholder.org file, add:

* Posts

The ~/posts~ resource allows us to create, read, update, and delete posts.

#+name: get-posts
#+begin_src restclient :var api=api-url
  GET :api/posts
#+end_src

Notice in the source block header, we are directing Org to use restclient as the language.

We also set the variable api to the value stored in the scalar named api-url. When using Org variables inside a source block, you just use the variable as you normally would in that language. In restclient, we preface variables with a colon, so that's how we use it in the request, GET :api/posts.

Now, make the API call by typing C-c C-c with the cursor inside the source block. The response will be displayed below the request block, in all its gory glory!

And this illustrates the usefulness of literate API documentation. We aren't going to include example requests and example responses that have to be updated whenever changes are made to the API endpoints or responses.

We're only including real requests!

We only have the one request, but it's enough to export. Let's try it!

In your jsonplaceholder.org file, type C-c C-e h o to export to index.html in the same directory as your org file, and then open that file in the browser. It should look like this:

Ok, but where's the response? Emacs didn't make the API request and include the response like I promised! Oh no!

That's OK. By default, Emacs only exports the source block. To also export results, edit the header of the source block named get-posts. Add :exports both so that it looks like:

#+begin_src restclient :var api=api-url :exports both

And export, again. Now you should see the response, as well!

No more updating example responses and including embarrassing typos! This is real, live response data.

Before we go any further with the "programming" part of "literate programming", let's recall for a moment that we are writing API documentation, and we want it to be clean and readable. Let's spend a little time sprucing up the appearance.

Currently, our document is ugly in three ways:

1. The anchors to headings are ugly, and read like: index.html#orga1b1b2d
2. The response is too big! We will have to scroll for pages to get to the next request.
3. The response headers are dumped out at the bottom of the response. It's not clean JSON.

Documenting the rest of the API now proceeds according to a set pattern. Indeed, a yasnippet could be constructed to insert a new method section, and speed the process along.

However, that doesn't reflect the utility of the Literate Programming approach to API documentation. Normally, I write this documentation as I am building new API endpoints, in order to test and perfect the endpoint. I use this method instead of Postman, and when I am done working on the API, it is already documented and under version control with the source code.

For example, I would have written what we have so far at the same time I was writing GET :api/posts, and I would have used that file extensively, making note of any parameters required.

When I pushed code, anyone on my team (who uses Emacs) could open the README.org and test the API for themselves.

As a last step before I push code, I can generate the index.html and pop it into a public static directory. Now when you browse to the base URL of my API, instead of getting an error message, you get API documentation.

Let's wrap up this post by documenting the rest of the /posts resource methods. This will also serve to illustrate how to use restclient to perform POST, PUT and DELETE HTTP methods.

Our final API documentation isn't very detailed (we only documented the /posts resource) but the rest is just a repetition of what we've already discussed. Still, it's quite nice, and can easily be made nicer:

Also, as discussed, it would be easy enough to write a yasnippet to automate create new method sections, then tab from field to field filling it out.

Also as discussed, that's not really the most useful approach to writing Literate API documentation. More useful is to write it as you go, using the document instead of Postman. Then not only is your documentation never wrong or out of sync with the API, but you don't have to go back and "waste time" documenting something you've already completed!

More advanced Literate Programming techniques may also prove useful when writing Literate API Documentation.

I have one such document I wrote for the Wurkzen API which allows you to acquire and cache a bearer token used in later requests.

It then creates a number of objects using the API, and then uses them to construct an entire dummy client, customers, locations, and perform all the API actions against dummy data that was created by the document, and then deleted by the document.

And if there are errors in my API, then the API documentation displays the errors! It also acts as an integration test, as detailed as you want to make it.

AND every request made by Emacs as it exports to HTML is displayed in Emacs minibuffer and logged in Emacs *Messages* buffer, so you can find errors with an incremental search instead of reading the index.html.

Literate Programming: beautiful, elegant, powerful.

And useful!

I ended up writing a yasnippet for this anyway.

Type in lit-api and C-<tab> and then tab from field to field.

<2022-01-29 Sat> <2024-04-07 Sun>

The really nice tutorial linked to above and below is 404. Since this tutorial picks up where that one left off, I've added a few other links. Some of these are old. Some don't talk about Org Mode. But the objective is this:

Before continuing this tutorial, get Nikola to publish Org files from the command-line to your GitHub Pages. Here's some resources that describe how to do that:

• https://streakycobra.github.io/posts/blogging-in-org-mode-with-nikola/
• https://meshlogic.github.io/posts/web-design/starting-a-personal-blog-with-nikola/
• https://randlow.github.io/posts/python/create-nikola-coding-blog/
• http://knowsuchagency.github.io/pyhi/posts/make-your-own-blog-with-github-pages-and-nikola/
• https://shankarmsy.github.io/posts/blogging-with-the-awesome-nikola-ipython-and-github.html

I will try to come back and write my own command-line tutorial later as a prequel to this post.

Before we start, save yourself a headache and don't install Nikola in a Python virtual environment. Or if you're using pyenv, install it in the global environment. This works fine in the terminal, but we're going to be writing some extra elisp for the nikola.el package. I have no doubt there's a way to get this package working with virtual environments, but as of this writing, I haven't figured it out.

Next, follow the instructions in this excellent tutorial to get all the pieces working together, and to learn the command-line way of doing things as a fallback.

The end result will be your first blog post on your GitHub Page. Now that you know it works, let's move on to setting up Emacs so you never have to leave it to write and publish.

We're going to use the "simple wrapper" nikola.el package as a base. Follow these instructions to install and configure it.

We want to default to Org files, instead of HTML, so here's the use-package config I have in my init.el. Note that I've turned on nikola-verbose and nikola-webserver-auto as well as setting the default extension to "org":

;; Nikola.el config
(use-package nikola
  :config
  (setq nikola-output-root-directory "~/Dev/mine/blog.notroot.online/")
  (setq nikola-verbose t)
  (setq nikola-webserver-auto t)
  (setq nikola-new-post-extension "org")
  (setq nikola-new-page-extension "org"))

At this point, we could just start writing by using the nikola-new-post command. It will open an Org file and you can start typing, as I am right now.

The problem comes when we run nikola-deploy. That command basically runs nikola deploy in a shell, but that's not the command we want to run. We want to run nikola github_deploy, as we did on the command-line.

So you'll also need to add the following nikola-github-deploy function to your init.el, which I simply whittled down from the nikola-deploy:

;; Custom nikola-github-deploy function
(defun nikola-github-deploy ()
  "Deploys the site to GitHub using github_deploy subcommand."
  (interactive)
  (message "Deploying the site to GitHub pages...")
  (async-start
   `(lambda ()
      ,(async-inject-variables "\\(nikola-\\)")
      (setq output nil)
      (let ((default-directory nikola-output-root-directory))
	(run-hook-with-args 'nikola-deploy-before-hook "")
	(if (not (eq nikola-deploy-before-hook-script nil))
	    (setq output (shell-command-to-string
			  nikola-deploy-before-hook-script)))
	(setq output (shell-command-to-string (concat nikola-command " github_deploy")))
	(if (not (eq nikola-deploy-after-hook-script nil))
	    (setq output (shell-command-to-string
			  nikola-deploy-after-hook-script)))
	(run-hook-with-args 'nikola-deploy-before-hook ""))
      output)
   (lambda (result)
     (if (cl-search "This command needs to run inside an existing Nikola site."
		    result)
	 (if (eq nikola-verbose t)
	     (message "Something went wrong. You may want to set nikola-verbo\
se to t and retry it.")
	   (message "Something went wrong. You may want to check the *Nikola*\
buffer."))
       (message "Site deployed correctly."))
     (if (eq nikola-verbose t)
	 (save-window-excursion
	   (switch-to-buffer "*Nikola*")
	   (let ((inhibit-read-only t))
	     (insert result)))))))

Now you can evaluate the init.el buffer, or restart Emacs, and do nikola-new-post. Emacs will ask for the title, and create the post files, and open a buffer to write a new post.

You'll immediately notice that, unlike the command-line experience you had earlier, the meta is not included at the top of the new buffer that opens. If your new post is named publishing-with-nikola-in-emacs.org, then the meta will be in the same directory, and named publishing-with-nikola-in-emacs.meta. You will have to edit it separately.

.. title: Publishing with Nikola in Emacs
.. slug: publishing-with-nikola-in-emacs
.. date: 2020-11-12 17:25:34
.. tags: emacs,nikola,blogging

When you're done writing your amazing blog post, just save it.

Now try previewing your new post by running nikola-webserver-start. Notice that that this is a live preview, and if you make changes and save again, you will see them when you refresh your browser.

Next, run nikola-build to make sure everything is rebuilt and updated.

When you're happy with the final result, then just publish it with nikola-github-deploy.

• Syntax Highlighting: If you included source blocks in your Org file, you probably noticed that syntax highlighting isn't supported. I'm going to look at org2nikola package to add highlight.js support at some point.
• Themes and Templates: Since I'm almost as new at this as you, the reader, are, I've got jack. I'm going to look into Nikola theme creation at some point in the future, and if suddenly this blog looks better, it's because I learned something. I'll probably blog about it!