title 📜 Scroll: tools for thought. html <a href="https://github.com/breck7/scroll/actions/workflows/didTheTestsPass.yml"><img src="https://github.com/breck7/scroll/actions/workflows/didTheTestsPass.yml/badge.svg" style="width: 49%;"/></a> <a href="https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/breck7/scroll"><img style="width: 49%;" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Gitpod-ready--to--code-blue?logo=gitpod"/></a> question Can you show me a screenshot? image public/screenshot.png question Can I try Scroll in the browser? aftertext Yes. Here is a web demo. https://try.scroll.pub/ web demo question What has changed in recent versions? aftertext View the releaseNotes. link releaseNotes.html releaseNotes question Who is Scroll for? aftertext Scroll is built for developers who like writing, tools for thought, open source, git backed static site generators, and fast simple code. question What makes Scroll different? replace TreeNotationLinked <a href="https://treenotation.org">Tree Notation</a> replace GrammarLinked <a href="https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/#standard%20grammar">Grammar</a> aftertext Scroll is not just another static site generator but also a *new language*. More than just a new language. It's a _freakishly simple new language that you can extend in amazing ways_. Scroll is a high level language mostly written in a new lower level language called GrammarLinked, and both Grammar and Scroll are built on the new syntax called TreeNotationLinked. https://staticsitegenerators.net another static site generator wrapsOn aftertext The basics of Scroll are even simpler than Markdown. For example, the keyword for title is title. italics the keyword for title is title aftertext You can stick to the basics or easily define new keywords extending the language to better fit your content and workflows. A simple indent is all you need to include sublanguages. No complex encoding needed. question How do I extend Scroll? aftertext Imagine you run a cooking blog where you share recipes. It may be useful to present recipes to your readers in a specialized style. You could create a recipe keyword and write a post like this: italics recipe code title My Snowball Cookies paragraph Bet you can't eat just one! recipe ingredients 6 large eggs 1/2 cup sugar step Beat eggs until foamy step Add sugar step Heat oven to 350 degrees step Bake for 10 minutes aftertext Notice that your post uses the keyword `recipe`, but Scroll does not have a keyword for that. No problem, just define it yourself using GrammarLinked, extending your dialect of Scroll: wrapsOn code recipeNode extends abstractScrollNode crux recipe javascript compile() { const addYourSpecialMagic = "" return `<div>${addYourSpecialMagic}</div>` } aftertext Your extension might generate beautiful custom HTML for that recipe section and also perhaps allow users to vote on it, or include it in a CSV export, et cetera. Scroll let's you combine mini-languages in a simple and non-conflicting way. What you do with those languages is up to you. aftertext For an extended example of extending Scroll check out this one which adds node types for Markdown, Textile, and BBCode. link https://scroll.pub/public/blog/indented-heredocs.html one question What is the biggest downside to Scroll? aftertext Althought it is simple to write GrammarLinked when you know what you're doing, documentation for GrammarLinked is still very poor and tooling isn't great yet. That will get better. question What kind of sites can I use Scroll to build? aftertext Scroll is a great solution for blogs and sites of one page, a few pages, tens of pages, hundreds of pages, or even thousands of pages. link https://scroll.pub one page link https://scroll.pub/public/blog/ a few pages link https://breckyunits.com/code/ tens of pages link https://breckyunits.com/ hundreds of pages link https://pldb.com/ thousands of pages question How do I get Scroll? aftertext The instant way is to try Scroll in GitPod. link https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/breck7/scroll GitPod aftertext Scroll is a command line app you install on your local machine. Scroll requires basic familiarity with the command line and NodeJs >=14. If you do not have NodeJs, Mac/Linux users can install NodeJs with #n# and Windows users can install NodeJs with Scoop. link https://nodejs.org NodeJs wrap # https://github.com/tj/n https://scoop.sh/ Scoop aftertext If you would like to use Scroll but aren't familiar with the command line, please open an issue and we may be able to help. aftertext Once you have NodeJs installed you can install from GitHub or npm. Scroll is scroll-cli on npm. link https://www.npmjs.com/package/scroll-cli scroll-cli aftertext You can install from GitHub: code git clone https://github.com/breck7/scroll cd scroll npm install -g . aftertext Or you can install Scroll with npm by typing: code npm install -g scroll-cli question How do I use Scroll? aftertext Scroll is a command line app. To see the commands type: code scroll help question Where do I get help? aftertext Post an issue in this GitHub or email us. email feedback@scroll.pub us question What are some example sites using Scroll? aftertext Scroll currently powers blog and sites of one page, a few pages, tens of pages, hundreds of pages, and even thousands of pages. link https://scroll.pub one page link https://scroll.pub/public/blog/ a few pages link https://breckyunits.com/code/ tens of pages link https://breckyunits.com/ hundreds of pages link https://pldb.com/ thousands of pages question What does a typical project folder look like? aftertext A typical Scroll project folder, excluding the files built by Scroll, looks like this: code 📁yourDomainName.org about.scroll feed.scroll firstPost.scroll index.scroll settings.scroll anImageInTheArticle.png aftertext When you run `scroll build`, Scroll reads those files and generates the outputs right in that site's folder. wrapsOn aftertext With Scroll your site's Scroll files and static files and generated html are all in one public folder and checked into version control. Usually you want to add `*.html` and `feed.xml` to your `.gitignore`. wrapsOn question How do I save drafts? aftertext Have a drafts folder next to your published scroll. For example: code 📁drafts someDraft.scroll 📁yourDomainName.org publishedArticle.scroll question What file formats does Scroll use? aftertext Scroll articles are written as Scroll files with the file extension scroll. The current base grammar for Scroll is defined here. code scroll https://github.com/breck7/scroll/tree/main/grammar here question What language is Scroll written in? aftertext Scroll is mostly written in GrammarLinked. The Scroll CLI app is written in plain Javascript and runs in Node.js. Scroll makes heavy use of Tree Languages. The CSS is written in Hakon. The HTML is written in stump. link https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/#standard%20hakon Hakon link https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer/#standard%20stump stump aftertext TypeScript is not used in the Scroll repo and because the Javascript is only ~1kloc that likely will not be necessary. question How does versioning of articles work? aftertext Scroll is designed for git. A single article is stored as a single file tracked by git. question Is Scroll public domain? aftertext Yes! Scroll is also 100% focused on helping people build internal or <strong>public domain sites</strong> and everything is designed with that assumption. question Why does the default theme have a single page layout? aftertext The default Scroll theme is designed to make it easier for *syntopic reading*. Being able to scan the page like a newspaper. This allows you to read at a higher level—to "get in the author's head"—compared to reading one article at a time from beginning to end. wrapsOn aftertext And if anyone prefers to read a scroll in a different way—they can! Scroll is for public domain sites. People are free to arrange the symbols any way they wish. question Will you make design decisions for non-public domain sites? aftertext No. question Can I use Scroll for internal private sites not intended for publishing? aftertext Yes! question In the single page layout why don't you have only the newest articles above the fold? aftertext This was originally a bug. But then it turns out to be a feature, as it gives older articles, which are often more important, more visibility. question Is there a place I can play with the Scroll grammar? aftertext Yes. In the Tree Language Designer. https://jtree.treenotation.org/designer#url%20https%3A%2F%2Ftry.scroll.pub%2FscrollScript.grammar Tree Language Designer question What's an easy way to have GitHub run Scroll and build my HTML files automatically? aftertext Go to your project folder and create the file below: code mkdir -p .github/workflows touch .github/workflows/buildAndDeployScroll.yaml aftertext Then open that file and paste in this code: code # Adapted from https://github.com/JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action name: Build and Deploy Scroll on: push: branches: - main jobs: build-and-deploy: runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - name: Checkout 🛎️ uses: actions/checkout@v2.3.1 - name: Install and Build run: | npm install scroll-cli ./node_modules/scroll-cli/scroll.js build # Uncomment the line below if you are ignoring *.html files in your gitignore file # rm .gitignore - name: Deploy 🚀 uses: JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action@4.1.4 with: branch: scroll-output # The branch the action should deploy to. folder: . aftertext Commit and push. Now go to your GitHub Repo and then Settings, then Pages, and select the scroll-output branch as the Source for the pages. Click save. Your built site should be live. code Settings code Pages code scroll-output question How do I check for broken links? aftertext Scroll does not check for broken links. For that, try linkinator. link https://github.com/JustinBeckwith/linkinator linkinator code # npm install -g linkinator linkinator https://scroll.pub > brokenLinks.txt question How do I check browser performance? aftertext Scroll does not have browser perf tools built in. For that, try lighthouse. link https://github.com/GoogleChrome/lighthouse lighthouse code # npm install -g lighthouse lighthouse https://scroll.pub --output-path scrollBrowserPerf.html; open scrollBrowserPerf.html question Where should I host my site? aftertext Any web server works. You can even host your scroll for free using GitHub Pages, just like this site. https://pages.github.com GitHub Pages question How do I use Scroll with a custom domain? aftertext Just buy a domain and point it to your web server or web host (such as GitHub Pages). Google Domains is where this domain is registered and is a great service. https://domains.google Google Domains question How can I deploy my site? aftertext If you have your own web server try rsync. Here's a bash one liner: code # deploy.sh # swap "/var/www/html" with the path to your website's location on your web server rsync -vr /[path/to/your/site]/* [yourdomain.com]:/var/www/html aftertext Add a section like the one below to your ~.ssh/config to save your username and correct key pair. link https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/494483/specifying-an-identityfile-with-ssh section code Host example.com User yourUserName IdentityFile ~/.ssh/example_id_rsa IdentitiesOnly yes question How can I output my Scroll to an EPUB file? aftertext Pandoc is one way to do it. If you are on a Mac and have Homebrew installed: link https://brew.sh Homebrew code brew install pandoc pandoc index.html -o book.epub question How can I track web traffic? aftertext Scroll emits HTML with zero Javascript and does not have any tracking or cookies. If you are using a web server like Nginx you might have some access logs on your server. The one liner below uses GoAccess to summarize recent Nginx access logs. link https://goaccess.io GoAccess code # apt-get install goaccess goaccess /var/log/nginx/access.log -o /var/www/html/YOUR_SECRET_REPORT_URL.html --log-format=COMBINED --real-time-html --ws-url=wss://YOURDOMAIN.com question Does Scroll support RSS? aftertext Yes! Just create a `feed.scroll` file like this. https://github.com/breck7/scroll/blob/main/public/blog/feed.scroll this wrapsOn question Does Scroll support categories and category pages? aftertext Yes! Just add your page to a category by using the `groups` keyword and then creating a `yourGroupName.scroll` page for the group. See a demo here. wrapsOn https://github.com/breck7/scroll/blob/main/public/blog/ here question Does Scroll support Open Graph tags for better social media sharing? aftertext Yes. By default the first image and first paragraph of an article will be used for the "og:" tags. Unfortunately Twitter doesn't support relative image links so you need to specify `baseUrl`. For more help check out the debuggers from Facebook and Twitter. wrapsOn https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug Facebook https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator Twitter question Does Scroll support themes and templates? aftertext Yes! Scroll includes a simple API for changing the style of your site. This is an active area of development so please reach out if you'd like to customize the look of your Scroll. question How can I build a scroll from a Twitter account? aftertext Hopefully someone will build a package or site that does this. For now, on your Twitter settings, download an archive of your data and convert the tweets JSON into scroll files. Or to experiment faster use this tool to grab some tweets as a TSV. link https://www.vicinitas.io/free-tools/download-user-tweets tool question What were some alternatives considered? aftertext There was no publishing software that reads and writes Scroll yet so building Scroll was necessary. Jekyll and Brecksblog were the two biggest inspirations. link https://jekyllrb.com Jekyll link https://github.com/breck7/brecksblog Brecksblog section Contributing to Scroll development question How do I contribute? aftertext File issues. Share your Scroll sites. aftertext You can submit pull requests too. The shorter the better. question How do I debug node.js performance? code # cd your_slow_scroll # you may need to update the path below so it points to your scroll code node --cpu-prof --cpu-prof-name=scrollNodePerf.cpuprofile ~/scroll/scroll.js build # Now ➡️ open a new Chrome tab ➡️ open devtools ➡️ click Performance ➡️ click "Load Profile..." ➡️ select your scrollNodePerf.cpuprofile question How is a keyword different than a web components? aftertext Scroll and Web Components are similar in that both empower users to define their own reusable components. But Scroll is higher level than web components. For example, in addition to easily targetting HTML and web components, Scroll also plays really nicely with version control and 2D editors. Scroll encourages encoding semantic content with as little noise as possible, which creates benefits in many places. question How do I run cross browser tests? aftertext For that we use BrowserStack. link https://browserstack.com BrowserStack question Why the name Scroll? aftertext The scroll was invented thousands of years ago and scrolls are still useful today. Scroll has been designed with a focus on simplicity and a goal of making something that would have been useful decades ago, with the hope that this will make it useful decades into the future. permalink index.html import settings.scroll keyboardNav releaseNotes.html releaseNotes.html