Lambdapad, blogging with Elixir or Erlang

There was some time when I started thinking about giving a boost to Lambdapad, the initiative from @garretsmith in Erlang that I loved was abandoned and I needed to get it for my blog, which was created in 2006 and has more than 300+ posts.

I started using WordPress, but I hate to keep the security and the constant tries to get it down, then I discovered Jekyll, but it was a bit awful from my point of view, and then I was moved to Octopress, which was a nicer version of Jekyll, still in Ruby.

Things were good, more or less, but getting slower and slower. Suddenly, Garret came with fresh air, a new idea using Erlang and faster than Octopress, I got into that very fast and I was amazed about what could I get developing with Erlang. But, again, things started going slower because I wanted to get more (i.e. tags, categories, …)

I was thinking about, what if Markdown could be handled by Erlang? and then I just realized that was done by Dave Thomas (and now it’s maintained by @RobertDober very actively), and it’s the magic behind ex_doc.

Ok, things (or pieces) were failing down, I rewrote everything in Elixir and started to use Earmark. I was providing some feedback to the project because my use case was a bit different from ex_doc, but finally, it was working, Lambdapad was relaunched:

https://lambdapad.com

Recently I’m reviewing the internal quality of the code, keeping clear the interfaces for helping me to add new cool features, and I was even presenting the project in the last Code BEAM STO 2022, I’ll share the Youtube video when it’s available.

This entry in the forum is only to give you information about the project, publish updates, and a way you can ask for features, ask questions, suggestions, … whatever indeed, comments are welcome!

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Nice! How do you integrate the javascript/css pipeline into the flow? The lambdapad.com site, which is built by lambdapad I presumed, seems to be quite javascript heavy.

Hi, and thanks for the question, I just realized I was not putting in my original message a link for the source code of the lambdapad.com website. This is the link:

As you can see, the JavaScript code isn’t processed, however, maybe it could be a great idea to have a way to run npm, webpack, esbuild, yarn, or whatever else from a simple configuration inside of the main script. What do you think?

It is up to you. the dilemma of using a non javascript based SSG is that you still have to work with the javascript tool chain. It begs the question of why bother with two tool chains instead of one, since there are no shortage of javascript SSGs.

Don’t get me wrong, I admire your effort of building this. I was just playing a would-be user here. The need to deal with 2 toolchains would be a steep barrier for a casual user, and a serious user can only emerge from casual users.

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I’ve opened an issue with the labels “enhancement” and “help wanted”. Feel free to help with it; adding more information you consider could be worth it.

Here is the link: Add JavaScript processor · Issue #14 · lambdapad/lambdapad · GitHub

We have available for building templates EEx. version 0.9.0 released.
https://lambdapad.com

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