contents/articles/glyph-020-released.html
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title: "Glyph 0.2.0 Released"
content-type: article
subtitle: "Featuring single-file compilation, programmatic usage and auto-regeneration, and more"
timestamp: 1273417200
tags: "glyph|ruby|opensource"
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<section class="section">
<p>I am very pleased to announce the second release of the <a href="/glyph/">Glyph Document Authoring Framework</a>.
For those who don’t know, Glyph is a pure-Ruby, extensible solution to author documents like books or
articles using a simple, fully-customizable markup language.</p>
<p>Since the <a href="/articles/introducing-glyph/">first release</a>, came out, last month, a lot happened. Plenty
of bugs were fixed and new features implemented, as shown by the <a
href="http://github.com/h3rald/glyph/blob/master/CHANGELOG.textile">changelog</a>. Here’s a brief
rundown of the most notable changes.</p>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_1" class="toc">What Glyph code looks like</h1>
</header>
<p>Earlier this week I <a href="http://blog.h3rald.com/making-a-custom-vim-syntax-file">blogged</a> about my new
<a href="http://github.com/h3rald/stash/blob/master/.vim/syntax/glyph.vim">Glyph vim syntax file</a>.
I’ve been using it for a while, and all I can say is that it really helps! Here’s what it looks
like:</p>
<p><img src="/images/pictures/glyph_syntax.png" /></p>
<p>I’m sorry for the Emacs and TextMate folks, but I only use Vim, so I only made a Vim syntax file.
Anyhow, Glyph grammar is very simple, so rolling out your own syntax file for your favorite editor
shouldn’t be too hard.</p>
</section>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_2" class="toc">Notable features</h1>
</header>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_3" class="toc">Single-file compilation</h1>
</header>
<p>Perhaps the most life-changing feature in this release is the possibility of compiling a single Glyph
source file into an <span class="caps">HTML</span> or <span class="caps">PDF</span> file. This means you
no longer need to create a full-blown project for writing a short article: just create a file anywhere
and run <code>glyph compile filename.glyph</code>on it!</p>
<p>The good thing is that with this new release you can also define snippets, configuration settings, and
even macros right into your Glyph files, so you can do almost anything without having to create a
project or fiddle with <span class="caps">YAML</span> files.</p>
</section>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_4" class="toc">Programmatic usage</h1>
</header>
<p>The second most notable feature is the possibility to use Glyph as a Ruby library, i.e. as you’d
use a filter like RedCloth or MarkDown. Additionally, it is also possible to compile single files
programmatically, so you can, for example, create <span class="caps">PDF</span> files for your articles
from the same source file. Don’t believe me? Feel free to click the <em>Download <span
class="caps">PDF</span></em> and <em>View Source</em> links on this very page to see for
yourself…</p>
<p>For those of you using the awesome <a href="http://nanoc.stoneship.org">nanoc</a> static site generator,
here’s a few source files you may want to take a look at:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://github.com/h3rald/h3rald/blob/master/lib/glyph-data.rb">lib/glyph-data.rb</a>
— How to update configuration settings.</li>
<li><a href="http://github.com/h3rald/h3rald/blob/master/lib/glyph-filter.rb">lib/glyph-data.rb</a>
— a simple Glyph filter.</li>
<li><a href="http://github.com/h3rald/h3rald/blob/master/Rules">Rules</a> — a rule using the
<code>Glyph#compile</code> method to generate <span class="caps">PDF</span> files.</li>
</ul>
</section>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_5" class="toc">Auto-regeneration</h1>
</header>
<p>Another very interesting feature is the possibility to auto-regenerate your output files automatically
whenever a source file is changed. Just run <code>glyph compile --auto</code> and you’re away.
I’d like to thank <a href="http://koraktor.github.com">Sebastian Staudt</a> for proposing,
implementing, and testing this feature.</p>
</section>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_6" class="toc">Conditional macros</h1>
</header>
<p>Finally, although it may worry some, I added the possibility to evaluate conditional expressions directly
in Glyph. The syntax is a bit verbose due to the extreme simplicity of Glyph parser, but it does the
job:</p>
<p><code>
?[and[
eq[$[document.output]|pdf]|
eq[$[tools.pdf_generator]|prince]
]|
style[pagination.css]]
</code></p>
<p>The snippet above can be used to include the <code>pagination.css</code> stylesheet only when generating
a <span class="caps">PDF</span> file with Prince <span class="caps">XML</span>.</p>
</section>
</section>
<section class="section">
<header>
<h1 id="h_7" class="toc">What’s next?</h1>
</header>
<p>Release 0.3.0 is currently being planned, and so are its <a
href="http://github.com/h3rald/glyph/issues">features</a>. For now, I’d like to thank the
following individuals for contributing to Glyph:</p>
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.jabbslad.com">Jamie Atkinson</a> (Jabbslad), for spotting and fixing some bugs and
providing feedback.</li>
<li><a href="http://koraktor.github.com">Sebastian Staudt</a> (koraktor), for spotting and fixing some bugs,
proposing and implementing new features.</li>
</ul>
<p>In particular, Sebastian is working on <a
href="http://wiki.github.com/h3rald/glyph/feature-bibliography-support">bibliogaphy support</a> for
Glyph, looking forward to it!</p>
<p>Although still in its infancy, Glyph is becoming more and more usable everyday. If you are interested, you
can contribute in many different ways to the project, such as:</p>
<ul>
<li>By participating to discussions on the <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/glyph-framework">user
group</a> (it’s a bit quiet of there for now…)</li>
<li>By spreading the word on Twitter, on your blog, or wherever you like.</li>
<li>By installing it, using it, reporting bugs and proposing new features (it’s just a
<code>gem install glyph</code> away!).</li>
<li>By actually contributing to its development (it’s <a
href="http://wiki.github.com/h3rald/glyph/contribution-guidelines">easy</a>!).</li>
</ul>
<p>Additionally, if you don’t like coding:</p>
<ul>
<li>feedback on the current documentation and on the <a
href="http://github.com/h3rald/glyph/raw/master/book/output/pdf/glyph.pdf">Glyph book</a> is
appreciated</li>
<li>if you are good with <span class="caps">CSS</span>, I’m looking for some nice new <span
class="caps">CSS</span> styles to include in the standard Glyph distribution.</li>
<li>if you’re good with graphics, Glyph needs a good-looking logo…</li>
</ul>
<p>Any form of contribution will be credited in some way, e.g. by links and tweets.</p>
</section>
</section>
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