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[users] Noob-friendly solutions for co-writing a gemini site?

1. Unicorn (unicorn (a) disroot.org)

Hello,

my partner wants to write a site with me. She likes the idea of Gemini and 
the simplicity of its syntax, but is not the kind of person to run cli 
applications like vim and rsync all the time. Which is how I have been 
doing it. She told me she would prefer to use something like the Nextcloud 
inbuilt text editor, though that one uses Markdown unfortunately and seems 
too complex for me to just modify it to work with gemtext right now.

So I was wondering, did any of you have similar challenges? What solution 
did you ultimately go with? There are a few pieces to this puzzle, so I 
will just list them individually:


highlighting is a big plus, fancy rendering of headers or lists etc is not 
necessary because it's already so simple)

the site ultimately will be

with some server-based solution or with eg. Syncthing keeping the state of 
our computers in sync

server that is hosting our site

I would be thankful for any suggestions! I believe finding a practical 
solution for this type of user would be important for more people to 
access gemini as writers. So even if you want to suggest a community 
effort for modifying an existing tool or creating a new one, I am open to 
working on it and hearing your ideas :)

Best,
Unicorn

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2. Omar Polo (op (a) omarpolo.com)


Unicorn <unicorn@disroot.org> writes:

> Hello,
>
> my partner wants to write a site with me. She likes the idea of Gemini
> and the simplicity of its syntax, but is not the kind of person to run
> cli applications like vim and rsync all the time. Which is how I have
> been doing it. She told me she would prefer to use something like the
> Nextcloud inbuilt text editor, though that one uses Markdown
> unfortunately and seems too complex for me to just modify it to work
> with gemtext right now.
>
> So I was wondering, did any of you have similar challenges? What
> solution did you ultimately go with? There are a few pieces to this
> puzzle, so I will just list them individually:
>
> * Easy writing of the text itself with Linux or web-based GUI (syntax
>   highlighting is a big plus, fancy rendering of headers or lists etc
>   is not necessary because it's already so simple)
> * The text should be structured in directories in the exact same way
>   that the site ultimately will be
> * The whole structure of files should be accessible to both of us,
>   either with some server-based solution or with eg. Syncthing keeping
>   the state of our computers in sync
> * The whole structure of files needs to be regularly uploaded to the
>   server that is hosting our site
>
> I would be thankful for any suggestions! I believe finding a practical
> solution for this type of user would be important for more people to
> access gemini as writers. So even if you want to suggest a community
> effort for modifying an existing tool or creating a new one, I am open
> to working on it and hearing your ideas :)
>
> Best,
> Unicorn

I never did something like this (I usually just use git or rsync to
publish) but maybe syncthing[0] is an option too.  If you don't know it,
it like dropbox, you can share directories across various devices, it's
decentralized, free and available for (almost?) all operating systems.

It can sync the files between your and her laptop, and if you don't want
to insta-publish the changes to your server, you can turn off syncthing
on your server and turn it on only when you're ready to publish.  For
editing you can use whatever text-editor you like.

Nextcloud could be an option too, but it seems to require more effort.
IIRC you can edit also plain text files with the built-in editor, but
it won't do syntax highlighting and you have to find a solution for the
publishing part.

Cheers,

Omar Polo


[0]: https://syncthing.net/

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3. Anna β€œCyberTailor” (cyber (a) sysrq.in)

I'd recommend using a network file system. Once it's mounted it
becomes transparent to the users and any text editor will be fine.

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4. Gary Johnson (lambdatronic (a) disroot.org)

Unicorn <unicorn@disroot.org> writes:

> So I was wondering, did any of you have similar challenges? What
> solution did you ultimately go with? There are a few pieces to this
> puzzle, so I will just list them individually:
>
> * Easy writing of the text itself with Linux or web-based GUI (syntax
>   highlighting is a big plus, fancy rendering of headers or lists etc
>   is not necessary because it's already so simple)

Just let her use any text editor with Gemtext syntax support. I use
Emacs with gemini-mode, which is great and even lets you follow your
links from file to file. I'm sure there are a number of other editors
out there to choose from with a similar kind of plugin.

> * The text should be structured in directories in the exact same way
>   that the site ultimately will be

Use your GUI file manager to make directories and new Gemtext files. I
haven't used one in years, but I'm pretty sure you just need to
right-click in a folder and select New Folder or New Text File each time
you want to create something. All Gemini servers (to my knowledge
anyway) will map URLs to file paths from a specified document root
directory, which should be the toplevel directory containing your
capsule pages.

> * The whole structure of files should be accessible to both of us,
>   either with some server-based solution or with eg. Syncthing keeping
>   the state of our computers in sync

Set up a Nextcloud server on the machine that is running your Gemini
server. Make one of your Nextcloud folders your document root directory
for your capsule.

Install Nextcloud clients on your local computer and your partner's
computer. Create your capsule directories and pages in a folder
automatically synced to your remotely hosted Nextcloud server.

This should ensure that any files that either of you create, edit, or
delete will automatically be shared between you two and published to
your public Gemini capsule with no additional steps.

> * The whole structure of files needs to be regularly uploaded to the
>   server that is hosting our site

See the previous point's comments about automatic publishing. If you
want to manually publish file changes instead, you should be able to
configure your Nextcloud client to only upload file changes when you
manually run it rather than automatically.

Best of luck,
  Gary

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5. Tijara (tijara (a) runbox.com)

On Apr-20 16:16, Unicorn wrote:
> She told me she would prefer to use something like the Nextcloud
> inbuilt text editor, though that one uses Markdown unfortunately [...]
> I would be thankful for any suggestions!

You could set up a script that uses a tool like
https://github.com/makeworld-the-better-one/md2gemini
to convert the Markdown files into Gemtext and upload them to the server
or move them to a specified shared folder.

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6. Unicorn (unicorn (a) disroot.org)


20 Apr 2021 18:34:46 Omar Polo <op@omarpolo.com>:
> I never did something like this (I usually just use git or rsync to 
publish) but maybe syncthing[0] is an option too.

Yeah, we have been using syncthing for other purposes, but then there is 
still the question of what would be a simple text editor, optimally with 
syntax highlighting, that she could use.


> Nextcloud could be an option too, but it seems to require more effort. 
IIRC you can edit also plain text files with the built-in editor, but it 
won't do syntax highlighting and you have to find a solution for the publishing part.

Unfortunately .gmi is not recognized as plain text :/
I was considering webdav to get the files out, but that also seems 
unnecessarily complicated. I suppose local editing with sync is a better 
idea unless there is a different server-based option thats better.

Thanks for the input though :)

Best,
Unicorn

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7. Sgaith (Sgiath (a) pm.me)

> Yeah, we have been using syncthing for other purposes, but then there is
> still the question of what would be a simple text editor, optimally with
> syntax highlighting, that she could use.

I would recommend Visual Studio Code [1] with the Gemini plugin [2].

I am aware that it is not ideal from many points of view but it is available
on almost all platforms, has easy-to-understand UI even for someone coming
Microsoft Office and with another plugin [3] can even directly connect to
server through SSH and show the files the same way as local ones.

I am using VS Code to collaborate on LaTeX files with my wife and it is
working for us.

Have a nice day
--
Sgiath
GPG: 0x70F9C7DE34CB3BC8

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[1] https://code.visualstudio.com/
[2] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=aaronduino.gemini
[3] https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-vscode-remote.remote-ssh

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8. Jason McBrayer (jmcbray (a) carcosa.net)


Unicorn writes:

> 20 Apr 2021 18:34:46 Omar Polo <op@omarpolo.com>:
>> I never did something like this (I usually just use git or rsync to
>> publish) but maybe syncthing[0] is an option too.
>
> Yeah, we have been using syncthing for other purposes, but then there
> is still the question of what would be a simple text editor, optimally
> with syntax highlighting, that she could use.

I *think* I remember someone creating a Gemini syntax highlighting
plugin for either GEdit or Kate...

Ah, searching pulls up this plugin that should work for gedit:
https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25bIpwmyP44M5EXF6SdICYQa8rBHhvRRtmqnclkZRx2%2BE%3D.sha256 

-- 
Jason McBrayer      | β€œStrange is the night where black stars rise,
jmcbray@carcosa.net | and strange moons circle through the skies,
                    | but stranger still is lost Carcosa.”
                    | ― Robert W. Chambers,The King in Yellow

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