I am rebuilding a site with docpad and it's very liberating to form a folders structure that makes sense with my workflow of content-creation, but I'm running into a problem with docpad's hard-division of content-to-be-rendered vs 'static'-content.
Docpad recommends that you put things like images in /files instead of /documents, and the documentation makes it sound as if otherwise there will be some processing overhead incurred.
First, I'd like an explanation if anyone has it of why a file with a
single extension (therefore no rendering) and no YAML front-matter,
such as a .jpg, would impact site-regeneration time when placed
within /documents.
Second, the real issue: is there a way, if it does indeed create a
performance hit, to mitigate it? For example, to specify an 'ignore'
list with regex, etc...
My use case
I would like to do this for posts and their associated images to make authoring a post more natural. I can easily see the images I have to work with and all the related files are in one place.
I also am doing this for an artwork I am displaying. In this case it's an even stronger use case, as the only data in my html.eco file is yaml front matter of various meta data, my layout automatically generates the gallery from all the attached images located in a folder of the same-name as the post. I can match the relative output path folder in my /files directory but it's error prone, because you're in one folder (src/files/artworks/) when creating the folder of images and another (src/documents/artworks/) when creating the html file -- typos are far more likely (as you can't ever see the folder and the html file side by side)...
Even without justifying a use case I can't see why docpad should be putting forth such a hard division. A performance consideration should not be passed on to the end user like that if it can be avoided in any way; since with docpad I am likely to be managing my blog through the file system I ought to have full control over that structure and certainly don't want my content divided up based on some framework limitation or performance concern instead of based on logical content divisions.
I think the key is the line about "metadata".Even though a file does NOT have a double extension, it can still have metadata at the top of the file which needs to be scanned and read. The double extension really just tells docpad to convert the file from one format and output it as another. If I create a straight html file in the document folder I can still include the metadata header in the form:
---
tags: ['tag1','tag2','tag3']
title: 'Some title'
---
When the file is copied to the out directory, this metadata will be removed. If I do the same thing to a html file in the files directory, the file will be copied to the out directory with the metadata header intact. So, the answer to your question is that even though your file has a single extension and is not "rendered" as such, it still needs to be opened and processed.
The point you make, however, is a good one. Keeping images and documents together. I can see a good argument for excluding certain file extensions (like image files) from being processed. Or perhaps, only including certain file extensions.
Related
I'm developing a plugin in Jekyll that inserts a new Liquid Tag (a block tag) named latex. It's purpose is to insert a block of LaTeX source code inside a post source file this way:
... post file contents ...
{% latex density=300 usepackages=pstricks-all, %}
\pspicture(5,5)
\psframe(0,0)(5,5) \psline(0,0)(5,5) \psline(0,5)(5,0)
\endpspicture
{% endlatex %}
... post file contents ...
The output post will contain a <img> tag instead of the Liquid Tag block once compiled and the LaTeX source will be compiled by a chained execution of latex, dvips, convert. So it will depend on external programs (TexLive and ImageMagick).
I've not found any issue with the explained so far. I can take the block of LaTeX, put it in a temporary file, and finally compile it to PNG. The rendered files must be put in the same folder of the post.
But just there I'm stuck: I want to put the generated PNG image to this folder inside the destination output folder. No problem defining a site-config variable to define the folder (in fact, I do that), nor put a file there. The problem is simple: I can write to the source folder, but the generated files will not be copied to the destination folder.
I know the reason: Jekyll generates first and renders afterwards. The copy process happens before the render part, so the generated files will not be copied.
I've found this SO entry: "How to generate files from Liquid blocks in Jekyll?", but the answer doesn't feel right: You must make a two-pass build for the files to be copied.
Also found "Generate file inside _site with Jekyll plugin", but this is not applicable because I don't want to render documents by templates.
The solution I've been planning is this:
Keep a folder with all the generated files and some index strategy for their final placement.
Implement a Sitewide method for the final placement procedure, something like:
class Site
def generate_latex_adds
// Code that copies the generated files to destination folders
end
end
Add self.generate_latex_adds calling that method inside the site_process.rb script just before the self.cleanup and self.write calls.
This will probably solve the problem, but I feel wrong to modify the site_process.rb. I'm considering pull this Liquid Tag to the community as a GitHub project, and as such, I must document this manual edit of site_process.rb to the users of this plugin. I know it's probably a common situation and a common solution, but I wonder if there is a better way to pospone the copy of the generated files without modifying core files. I'd like to keep the plugin simple: just copy the plugin file to the _plugins directory.
Any ideas?
EDIT: I'm more interested in the reasoning that on the actual code. I want to learn, not asking for a code solution.
As anyone has answered my question up to now, and I had kept investigating the issue. Finally I've got an elegant solution: use the Jekyll::StaticFile class. I have missed that class (sidenote: Read more carefully the docs).
When you add one object of this class to the site.static_files array, you are marking this file as pending for copy after the render process is completed. In fact, the copy of such files is done in the site.write process. Take a look at the site_process.rb file in your Jekyll installation.
The usage of this class is easy. When you need to mark a file for future copy, you simply execute a code like this:
site.static_files << Jekyll::StaticFile.new(site, site.source, path, filename)
Where path and filename depends on the location of your file in the src folder.
And that's all: You generate the files in the src folder, mark them as pending for copy and let Jekyll do the rest. No modification of site_process.rb at all!
You can take a look at the resulting LaTeX -> PNG liquid tag code at GitHub: https://github.com/fgalindo/jekyll-liquid-latex-plugin
I've also implemented a cleanup method there to eliminate orphaned generated files from posts that have been modified and rebuilt.
I’m new to EE and trying to learn the basics. Some questions about the File Manager:
I upload a photo and put “cat, kitten” in the description. When I do a search for “kitten”, it finds the photo. But when I do a search for “cat”, I get nothing. Any ideas what’s going on?
The file metadata are: file title, file name, description, credit, and location. What if I wanted to add custom fields? How do I do that?
In the template files, how do I access a particular manipulation (I call this “rendition”) of an image? Say I define a rendition “thumbnail” to be 100x100. How do I access that particular rendition in a template?
Is there a way to randomize the file names of the files being uploaded?
After uploading an image and testing it against PageSpeed, it turns out that the image can still be optimized via losslessly compressing it. How can this problem be addressed?
Ah, the file manager. Not EE's brightest spot.
It would not surprise me if the search in the File Manager was not
very robust. I'd try more variations to narrow it down (what kind of
characters affect the results - commas, dashes, spaces, etc ... do
partial terms match?)
You cannot currently add custom metadata to files in the file manager.
Use this syntax: {field_name:rendition}, e.g.,
{my_image:thumbnail} (docs).
Nope.
EE just uses the GD library available in your PHP install to resize
images. If you want the highest possible optimization, you'll have
to do your image manipulations yourself.
Given your queries, I would suggest you have a look at Assets by Pixel and Tonic. It offers a far superior file management experience on most of these fronts.
I'm writing an app where I would like a lot of the data, literals, even image files, to be sourced from data file(s) rather than being hard coded.
So for example if I open a new page the Page Title would come from the file and overwrite what was typed in.
Is this possible and if so what's the best approach?
Have a look at resources files: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/LoadingResources/Introduction/Introduction.html
I am currently developing some functionality that implements some complex calculations. The calculations themselves are explained and defined in Word documents.
What I would like to do is create a hyperlink in each code file that references the assocciated Word document - just as you can in Word itself. Ideally this link would be placed in or near the XML comments for each class.
The files reside on a network share and there are no permissions to worry about.
So far I have the following but it always comes up with a file not found error.
file:///\\165.195.209.3\engdisk1\My Tool\Calculations\111-07 MyToolCalcOne.docx
I've worked out the problem is due to the spaces in the folder and filenames.
My Tool
111-07 MyToolCalcOne.docx
I tried replacing the spaces with %20, thus:
file:///\\165.195.209.3\engdisk1\My%20Tool\Calculations\111-07%20MyToolCalcOne.docx
but with no success.
So the question is; what can I use in place of the spaces?
Or, is there a better way?
One way that works beautifully is to write your own URL handler. It's absolutely trivial to do, but so very powerful and useful.
A registry key can be set to make the OS execute a program of your choice when the registered URL is launched, with the URL text being passed in as a command-line argument. It just takes a few trivial lines of code to will parse the URL in any way you see fit in order to locate and launch the documentation.
The advantages of this:
You can use a much more compact and readable form, e.g. mydocs://MyToolCalcOne.docx
A simplified format means no trouble trying to encode tricky file paths
Your program can search anywhere you like for the file, making the document storage totally portable and relocatable (e.g. you could move your docs into source control or onto a website and just tweak your URL handler to locate the files)
Your URL is unique, so you can differentiate files, web URLs, and documentation URLs
You can register many URLs, so can use different ones for specs, designs, API documentation, etc.
You have complete control over how the document is presented (does it launch Word, an Internet Explorer, or a custom viewer to display the docs, for example?)
I would advise against using spaces in filenames and URLs - spaces have never worked properly under Windows, and always cause problems (or require ugliness like %20) sooner or later. The easiest and cleanest solution is simply to remove the spaces or replace them with something like underscores, dashes or periods.
Due to using both Windows and Ubuntu on my computer I'd like to be able to create documents independently. I have one directory for logos and I want to use them in any documents everywhere.
The problem with different file addressing I solved with those commands:
\newcommand{\winlogo}{D:/logo/}
\newcommand{\linlogo}{/media/DATA/logo/}
\includegraphics{\winlogo logo_bw}
How to provide this feature:
if(parameter==windows){adress:=D:/logo/}
elseif(parameter=linux){adress:=/media/DATA/logo}
else{error}
I've run into this problem as well, and I found that hard-coding the paths is an absolutely terrible idea. Also, keeping these directories in sync will eventually be a problem once your projects begin to grow.
The way I solved this was to put everything in version control (I like git, your mileage may vary).
Then I created an images folder, so my folder hierarchy looks like this:
Working-Dir
|-- images/
|-- myfile.tex
|-- nextfile.tex
Then in the preamble of my documents: \usepackage{graphicx} and \graphicspath{{images/}} which tells latex to look for a folder called images, then look for the graphics inside the folder.
Then I do my work on on comp, push my finished work back the repo, and when I switch computers I just pull from my repo. This way, everything stays in sync, no matter which computer i'm working on.
Treating tex source like source code has greatly improved my work flow and efficiency. I'd suggest similar measures for anyone dealing with a lot of latex source.
EDIT:
From: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX/Importing_Graphics
Graphics storage
There is a way to tell LaTeX where to
look for images: for example, it can
be useful if you store images
centrally for use in many different
documents. The answer is in the
command \graphicspath which you supply
with an argument giving the name of an
additional directory path you want
searched when a file uses the
\includegraphics command, here are
some examples:
\graphicspath{{c:\mypict~1\camera}}
\graphicspath{{/var/lib/images/}}
\graphicspath{{./images/}}
\graphicspath{{images_folder/}{other_folder/}{third_folder/}}
please see
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/graphics/grfguide.pdf
As you may have noticed, in the first
example I've used the "safe" (MS-DOS)
form of the Windows MyPictures folder
because it's a bad idea to use
directory names containing spaces.
Using absolute paths, \graphicspath
does make your file less portable,
while using relative paths (like the
last example), you shouldn't have any
problem with portability, but remember
not to use spaces in file-names.
Alternatively, if you are using
PDFLaTeX, you can use the package
grffile which will then allow you to
use spaces in file names.
The third option should do you well-- just specify multiple paths for the \graphicspath I wonder if LaTeX will fail gracefully if you just include all of your paths in there (one for images, one for your logs on linux, one for your logos on windows)?
Mica, thank you once more, your advice works properly!
I've tested this code in preamble, in .sty file it doesn't work:
\usepackage{graphicx}
\graphicspath{{/media/DATA/logo/}{d:/logo/}{img/}}
where
/media/DATA/logo/ is address to directory with logos on mounted partition in Linux
d:/logo/ is address to same directory in windows
img/ is address of images for current document in actual working directory
and this code in document:
\includegraphics{logo_zcu_c} from logo dir
\includegraphics{hvof} from img/ dir`