Post #1763226

2026-04-29 03:29 UTC

So among the things that got seriously neglected when I started school were my blog and Gemini capsule. I've been trying to get a bit more active again with programming (hence the Sunstone project) but I also really miss writing. At least, I miss writing about what interests me, and not just writing endless essays and term papers about subject matter that only half the time really aligns with my interest. But the blog was already kind of hard to maintain -before- I started school. I've been using Zola for a few years now. It's mostly a nice experience, but I have three main complaints. First, there is no equation rendering by default, and no plugin system. That leaves the only way to render equations by either doing them client side using Javascript (fuck no) or by hand writing mathml (ain't nobody got time for that). Next, when you build the site, it nukes everything in the output directory. That's not exactly convenient for me, considering I'm using Codeberg pages and the -rendered- site is what gets checked in to git. Nothing like learning the hard way that your .git directory got nuked. Third, there is no such thing as published/unpublished in Zola. Everything gets built, whether it's done or not. I don't care for that. Sometimes I want to be wiring on multiple things concurrently, and they don't ask get finished at the same time. [1/?]

Replies (1)

@jeang3nie@social.linux.pizza 2026-04-29 03:43

I've tried a bunch of other ssg's looking for one that fit how I want to work 'just right'. Most either have one or more of the same issues that I just griped about or else they have some other issue that bugs the hell or of me. The two that I came closest to wanting to use are Hugo and Pelican. But Hugo is more complicated overall than I want or need, and Pelican's workflow isn't to my taste. I'm also not a fan of trying to use anything written in Python long-term based on past experience. Some, not all, but some Python maintainers don't seem to have a concept of "stable", setting up a virtual environment still manages to break sometimes when libpython is upgraded, and really my overall view of python is that it is "pseudo-code that runs". Pelican also nukes the output directory to build your site fresh, and telling it to watch and rebuild doesn't work in my testing. I could live without that last one, but if they're is a feature and that feature is broken it doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings about using that software. Stepping back a bit, my Gemini capsule uses a generator that I wrote and maintain myself called Zond. Zond fits how I like to work pretty well. It knows the difference between a page and a blog post. It doesn't build anything that doesn't have a published date in the Metadata. If it isn't a .gmi file it simply copies it from the content directory to the output directory. You get a pretty basic tag system for categorizing pages and an atom feed. Anyway, I figured I might as well just roll my own again, so that's what I'm doing. [2/?]

Open ##1763886