all repos — h3rald @ 807c5c4f57b42c0ed6690bb4deb35bb32c1e4824

The sources of https://h3rald.com

contents/glyph/book/introduction.html

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
 10
 11
 12
 13
 14
 15
 16
 17
 18
 19
 20
 21
 22
 23
 24
 25
 26
 27
 28
 29
 30
 31
 32
 33
 34
 35
 36
 37
 38
 39
 40
 41
 42
 43
 44
 45
 46
 47
 48
 49
 50
 51
 52
 53
 54
 55
 56
 57
 58
 59
 60
 61
 62
 63
 64
 65
 66
 67
 68
 69
 70
 71
 72
 73
 74
 75
 76
 77
 78
 79
 80
 81
 82
 83
 84
 85
 86
 87
 88
 89
 90
 91
 92
 93
 94
 95
 96
 97
 98
 99
 100
 101
 102
 103
 104
 105
 106
 107
 108
 109
 110
 111
 112
 113
 114
 115
 116
 117
 118
 119
 120
 121
 122
 123
 124
 125
 126
 127
 128
 129
 130
 131
 132
 133
 134
 135
 136
 137
 138
 139
 140
 141
 142
 143
 144
 145
 146
 147
 148
 149
 150
 151
 152
 153
 154
 155
 156
 157
 158
 159
 160
 161
 162
 163
 164
 165
 166
 167
 168
 169
 170
 171
 172
 173
 174
 175
 176
 177
 178
 179
 180
 181
 182
 183
 184
 185
 186
 187
 188
 189
 190
 191
 192
 193
 194
 195
 196
 197
 198
 199
 200
 201
 202
 203
 204
 205
 206
 207
 208
 209
 210
 211
 212
 213
 214
 215
 216
 217
 218
 219
 220
 221
 222
-----
title: "Glyph - Introduction"
content-type: page
-----
<nav class="navigation"> | <a href="/glyph/book/index.html">Contents</a> | <a href="/glyph/book/license.html">License
		→</a></nav>
<section class="section">
	<p>Glyph is a <em>Rapid Document Authoring Framework</em>.</p>
	<p>With Glyph, creating and maintaining any kind of document becomes as easy as&#8230; <em>programming</em>. Glyph
		enables you to minimize text duplication, focus on content rather than presentation, manage references
		seamlessly and automate tedious tasks through a simple but effective macro language, specifically geared towards
		customization and extensibility.</p>

	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h1 id="h_2" class="toc">Main Features</h1>
		</header>
		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_3" class="toc">Command Line Interface</h1>
			</header>
			<p>Glyph is 100% command line. Its interface resambles <a href="http://git-scm.com/">Git&#8217;s</a> for its
				simplicity and power (thanks to the <a href="http://github.com/davetron5000/gli">gli</a> gem). Here are
				some example commands:</p>
			<ul>
				<li><code>glyph init</code> &#8212; to initialize a new Glyph project in the current (empty) directory.
				</li>
				<li><code>glyph add introduction.textile</code> &#8212; to create a new file called
					<em>introduction.textile</em>.
				</li>
				<li><code>glyph compile</code> &#8212; to compile the current document into a single <span
						class="caps">HTML</span> file.</li>
				<li><code>glyph compile --auto</code> &#8212; to keep recompiling the current document every time a file
					is changed.</li>
				<li><code>glyph compile -f pdf</code> &#8212; to compile the current document into <span
						class="caps">HTML</span> and then transform it into <span class="caps">PDF</span>.</li>
				<li><code>glyph compile readme.glyph</code> &#8212; to compile a <em>readme.glyph</em> located in the
					current directory into a single <span class="caps">HTML</span> file.</li>
				<li><code>glyph outline -l 2</code> &#8212; Display the document outline, up to second-level headers.
				</li>
				<li><code>glyph stats</code> &#8212; Display project statistics.</li>
			</ul>

		</section>

		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_4" class="toc">Minimalist Syntax</h1>
			</header>
			<p>Glyph syntax rules can be explained using Glyph itself:</p>

			<div class="CodeRay">
				<div class="code">
					<pre><span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n1" name="n1">1</a></span>section[
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n2" name="n2">2</a></span>  @title[Something about Glyph]
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n3" name="n3">3</a></span>  txt[
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n4" name="n4">4</a></span>You can use Glyph macros in conjunction 
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n5" name="n5">5</a></span>with _Textile_ or _Markdown_ to
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n6" name="n6">6</a></span>produce HTML files effortlessly.
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n7" name="n7">7</a></span>  ]
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n8" name="n8">8</a></span>  p[Alternatively, you can just use em[Glyph itself] to generate HTML tags.]
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n9" name="n9">9</a></span>  section[
<span class="line-numbers"><strong><a href="#n10" name="n10">10</a></strong></span>    @title[What about PDFs?]
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n11" name="n11">11</a></span>    @id[pdf]
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n12" name="n12">12</a></span>    p[
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n13" name="n13">13</a></span>Once you have a single, well-formatted HTML 
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n14" name="n14">14</a></span>file, converting it to PDF is
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n15" name="n15">15</a></span>extremely easy with a free 3rd-party 
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n16" name="n16">16</a></span>renderer like =&gt;[http://www.princexml.com|Prince] 
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n17" name="n17">17</a></span>or =&gt;[http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/|wkhtmltopdf].
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n18" name="n18">18</a></span>    ]
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n19" name="n19">19</a></span>  ]   
<span class="line-numbers"><strong><a href="#n20" name="n20">20</a></strong></span>]</pre>
				</div>
			</div>

			<p>The Glyph code above corresponds to the following HTML code:</p>
			<div class="CodeRay">
				<div class="code">
					<pre><span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n1" name="n1">1</a></span><span class="tag">&lt;div</span> <span class="attribute-name">class</span>=<span class="string"><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span><span class="content">section</span><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span></span><span class="tag">&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n2" name="n2">2</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;h2</span> <span class="attribute-name">id</span>=<span class="string"><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span><span class="content">h_10</span><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span></span><span class="tag">&gt;</span>Something about Glyph<span class="tag">&lt;/h2&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n3" name="n3">3</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;p&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n4" name="n4">4</a></span>    You can use Glyph macros in conjunction with 
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n5" name="n5">5</a></span>    <span class="tag">&lt;em&gt;</span>Textile<span class="tag">&lt;/em&gt;</span> or <span class="tag">&lt;em&gt;</span>Markdown<span class="tag">&lt;/em&gt;</span> to
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n6" name="n6">6</a></span>    produce HTML files effortlessly.
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n7" name="n7">7</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;/p&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n8" name="n8">8</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;p&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"> <a href="#n9" name="n9">9</a></span>    Alternatively, you can just use <span class="tag">&lt;em&gt;</span>Glyph itself<span class="tag">&lt;/em&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><strong><a href="#n10" name="n10">10</a></strong></span>    to generate HTML tags.
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n11" name="n11">11</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;/p&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n12" name="n12">12</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;div</span> <span class="attribute-name">class</span>=<span class="string"><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span><span class="content">section</span><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span></span><span class="tag">&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n13" name="n13">13</a></span>   <span class="tag">&lt;h3</span> <span class="attribute-name">id</span>=<span class="string"><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span><span class="content">pdf</span><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span></span><span class="tag">&gt;</span>What about PDFs?<span class="tag">&lt;/h3&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n14" name="n14">14</a></span>   <span class="tag">&lt;p&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n15" name="n15">15</a></span>     Once you have a single, well-formatted HTML 
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n16" name="n16">16</a></span>     file, converting it to PDF is
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n17" name="n17">17</a></span>     extremely easy with a free 3rd-party renderer 
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n18" name="n18">18</a></span>     like <span class="tag">&lt;a</span> <span class="attribute-name">href</span>=<span class="string"><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span><span class="content">http://www.princexml.com</span><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span></span><span class="tag">&gt;</span>Prince<span class="tag">&lt;/a&gt;</span> 
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n19" name="n19">19</a></span>     or <span class="tag">&lt;a</span> <span class="attribute-name">href</span>=<span class="string"><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span><span class="content">http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/</span><span class="delimiter">&quot;</span></span><span class="tag">&gt;</span>wkhtmltopdf<span class="tag">&lt;/a&gt;</span>.
<span class="line-numbers"><strong><a href="#n20" name="n20">20</a></strong></span>   <span class="tag">&lt;/p&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n21" name="n21">21</a></span>  <span class="tag">&lt;/div&gt;</span>
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n22" name="n22">22</a></span><span class="tag">&lt;/div&gt;</span></pre>
				</div>
			</div>

		</section>

		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_5" class="toc">Content Reuse</h1>
			</header>
			<p>Finding yourself repeating the same sentence over an over? Glyph allows you to create snippets. Within
				snippets. Within other snippets (and so on, for a long long time&#8230;) as long as you don&#8217;t
				define a snippet by defining itself, which would be kinda nasty (and Glyph would complain!):</p>
			<div class="CodeRay">
				<div class="code">
					<pre><span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n1" name="n1">1</a></span>snippet:[entities|snippets and macros]
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n2" name="n2">2</a></span>snippet:[custom_definitions|
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n3" name="n3">3</a></span>  p[Glyph allows you to define your own &amp;[entities].]
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n4" name="n4">4</a></span>]
<span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n5" name="n5">5</a></span>&amp;[custom_definitions]</pre>
				</div>
			</div>

			<p>...which results in:</p>
			<div class="CodeRay">
				<div class="code">
					<pre><span class="line-numbers"><a href="#n1" name="n1">1</a></span><span class="tag">&lt;p&gt;</span>Glyph allows you to define your own snippets and macros.<span class="tag">&lt;/p&gt;</span></pre>
				</div>
			</div>

			<p>If yourself dreaming about <em>parametric</em> snippets, just create your own macros (see the <a
					href="http://github.com/h3rald/glyph/blob/master/book/text/changelog.glyph">source</a> of
				Glyph&#8217;s changelog, just to have an idea).</p>

		</section>
		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_6" class="toc">Automation of Common Tasks</h1>
			</header>
			<p>If you&#8217;re writing a book, you shouldn&#8217;t have to worry about pagination, headers, footers,
				table of contents, section numbering or similar. Glyph understands you, and will take care of everything
				for you (with a little help from CSS3, sometimes).</p>

		</section>
		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_7" class="toc">Reference Validation</h1>
			</header>
			<p>Feel free to add plenty of links, snippets, bookmarks, &#8230; if Glyph doesn&#8217;t find something, it
				will definitely complain. Broken references are a thing on the past, and you don&#8217;t need to worry
				about it.</p>

		</section>
		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_8" class="toc">Extreme Extensibility</h1>
			</header>
			<ul>
				<li>You miss a <code>!!!</code> macro to format really, <em>really</em> important things? Create it. In
					under 3 seconds, in Ruby or Glyph itself. And yes, you can use special characters, too.</li>
				<li>You want your own, very special special <code>glyph create --everything</code> command to create all
					<em>you</em> need in a Glyph project? You can do it. Using your own Rake tasks, too.
				</li>
				<li>You want Glyph to output <span class="caps">ODF</span> files? You can do it, and you&#8217;ll be
					able to run <code>glyph generate -f odf</code>. This would probably require a little more time, but
					it&#8217;s trivial, from a technical point of view.</li>
			</ul>

		</section>
		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_9" class="toc">Convention over Configuration</h1>
			</header>
			<p>Put your text files in <code>/text</code>, your images in <code>/images</code>, add custom macros in a
				<code>macro</code> folder within your <code>/lib</code> folder&#8230; you get the picture: Glyph has its
				special places.
			</p>
			<p>Nonetheless, you also have 1 (<em>one</em>) configuration file to customize to your heart&#8217;s content
				(with smart defaults).</p>

		</section>
		<section class="section">
			<header>
				<h1 id="h_10" class="toc">Free and Open Source</h1>
			</header>
			<p>Glyph is 100% Open Source Software, developed using the Ruby Programming Language and licensed under the
				very permissive terms of the <a href="http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php"><span
						class="caps">MIT</span> License</a>.</p>
			<p>If you have Ruby installed, just run <code>gem install glyph</code>. That&#8217;s all it takes.</p>

		</section>

	</section>
	<section class="section">
		<header>
			<h1 id="h_11" class="toc">Resources</h1>
		</header>
		<ul>
			<li>Home Page: <a href="/glyph/">/glyph/</a></li>
			<li>Repository: <a href="http://www.github.com/h3rald/glyph/">http://www.github.com/h3rald/glyph/</a></li>
			<li>Bug Tracking: <a
					href="http://www.github.com/h3rald/glyph/issues">http://www.github.com/h3rald/glyph/issues</a></li>
			<li>Development Wiki <a href="http://wiki.github.com/h3rald/glyph">http://wiki.github.com/h3rald/glyph</a>
			</li>
			<li>RubyGem Download <a href="http://www.rubygems.org/gems/glyph">http://www.rubygems.org/gems/glyph</a>
			</li>
			<li>Book (<span class="caps">PDF</span>): <a
					href="http://github.com/downloads/h3rald/glyph/glyph.pdf">http://github.com/downloads/h3rald/glyph/glyph.pdf</a>
			</li>
			<li>Book (Web): <a href="/glyph/book/">/glyph/book/</a></li>
			<li>Reference Documentation: <a href="http://rubydoc.info/gems/glyph/">http://rubydoc.info/gems/glyph/</a>
			</li>
			<li>User Group: <a
					href="http://groups.google.com/group/glyph-framework">http://groups.google.com/group/glyph-framework</a>
			</li>
		</ul>

	</section>

</section>
<nav class="navigation"> | <a href="/glyph/book/index.html">Contents</a> | <a href="/glyph/book/license.html">License
		→</a></nav>