blog.lazkani.io-20200902-historical/posts/misc/welcome-back-to-the-old-world.org

#+BEGIN_COMMENT
.. title: Welcome back to the old world
.. date: 2020-08-31
.. slug: welcome-back-to-the-old-world
.. updated: 2020-08-31
.. status: published
.. tags: blog, orgmode, nikola, emacs, rst
.. category: misc
.. authors: Elia el Lazkani
.. description: Sometimes, change is good. Also, sometimes moving back is moving forward.
.. type: text
#+END_COMMENT

I have recently blogged about moving to /emacs/ and the reasons behind it.

Since then, I have used /Orgmode/ a lot more. And I have begun to like it even more. I had a plan to move the blog to /[[https://gohugo.io/][Hugo]]/. After giving it a try, I had inconsistent results. I must've been doing something wrong. I've spend a lot more time than I anticipated on it. At some point, it becomes an endeavor with diminishing returns. So I ditched that idea.

But why did I want to move to /Hugo/ in the first place ?

{{{TEASER_END}}}

* Why /Hugo/ you may ask
Well, the answer to that question is very simple; /Orgmode/.

The long answer is that the default /Nikola/ markup language and the most worked on is /reStructuredText/. It can support other formats. /Orgmode/ also seems widely supported and can be easily manipulated. So I want to move to /Orgmode/ instead of /rst/.

But what are the odds ?

Damn... It has plugins and you can find an [[https://plugins.getnikola.com/v8/orgmode/][orgmode]] page where you find

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
 $ nikola plugin -i orgmode
#+END_EXAMPLE

Where the heck did that come from ? Okay that was easy.

Turns out /Nikola/ supports /Orgmode/.

* Nikola /Orgmode/ plugin installation
The page suggests running.

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
 $ nikola plugin -i orgmode
#+END_EXAMPLE

Followed by

#+BEGIN_SRC python
# NOTE: Needs additional configuration in init.el file.

# Add the orgmode compiler to your COMPILERS dict.
COMPILERS["orgmode"] = ['.org']

# Add org files to your POSTS, PAGES
POSTS = POSTS + (("posts/*.org", "posts", "post.tmpl"),)
PAGES = PAGES + (("pages/*.org", "pages", "page.tmpl"),)
#+END_SRC

Okay, that's not too bad. Next step.

* Alright, let's run our first org post
The installation was easy, running it should be just as easy.

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
$ nikola auto
[2020-08-31 23:16:17] INFO: auto: Rebuilding the site...
Scanning posts..........done!
.  render_taxonomies:output/archive.html
.  render_taxonomies:output/categories/index.html

...

.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/index.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/index.css.map
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/index.js.map
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/index.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/rst_base.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/ipython.min.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/html4css1.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/nikola_rst.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/baguetteBox.min.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/nikola_ipython.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/rst.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/theme.css
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/justified-layout.min.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/html5.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/gallery.min.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/fancydates.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/baguetteBox.min.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/gallery.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/html5shiv-printshiv.min.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/luxon.min.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/js/fancydates.min.js
.  copy_assets:output/assets/xml/rss.xsl
.  copy_assets:output/assets/xml/atom.xsl
.  copy_assets:output/assets/css/code.css
.  render_posts:cache/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.html
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/00debian.el (source)...
Loading /etc/emacs/site-start.d/50dictionaries-common.el (source)...
Loading debian-ispell...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-default.el (source)...
Loading /var/cache/dictionaries-common/emacsen-ispell-dicts.el (source)...
Created img-url link.
Created file link.
Please install htmlize from https://github.com/hniksic/emacs-htmlize
TaskError - taskid:render_posts:cache/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.html
PythonAction Error
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/plugins/orgmode/orgmode.py", line 75, in compile
    subprocess.check_call(command)
  File "/home/user/anaconda3/envs/nikola/lib/python3.8/subprocess.py", line 364, in check_call
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['emacs', '--batch', '-l', '/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/plugins/orgmode/init.el', '--eval', '(nikola-html-export "/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.org" "/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/cache/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.html")']' returned non-zero exit status 255.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/user/anaconda3/envs/nikola/lib/python3.8/site-packages/doit/action.py", line 437, in execute
    returned_value = self.py_callable(*self.args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/user/anaconda3/envs/nikola/lib/python3.8/site-packages/nikola/post.py", line 711, in compile
    self.compile_html(
  File "/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/plugins/orgmode/orgmode.py", line 94, in compile
    raise Exception('''Cannot compile {0} -- bad org-mode configuration (return code {1})
Exception: Cannot compile posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.org -- bad org-mode configuration (return code 255)
The command is emacs --batch -l /home/user/blog.lazkani.io/plugins/orgmode/init.el --eval '(nikola-html-export "/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.org" "/home/user/blog.lazkani.io/cache/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.html")'

########################################
render_posts:cache/posts/text-editors/emacs-and-org-mode.html <stdout>:

[2020-08-31 23:16:29] INFO: auto: Serving on http://127.0.0.1:8000/ ...
[2020-08-31 23:16:36] INFO: auto: Server is shutting down.
#+END_EXAMPLE

I knew there was a catch !

You might be looking for the error message and it might take you a while. It took me a bit to find out what was wrong. The error is actually the following.

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
Please install htmlize from https://github.com/hniksic/emacs-htmlize
#+END_EXAMPLE

It turns out that the plugin is a /python/ script that calls /emacs/ with a configuration =init.el=. I know I have /htmlize/ installed on my /doom/ system but /Nikola/ does not see it.

After looking around the internet, I found the =init.el= file I'm looking for. It's in =plugins/orgmode/init.el= and it has the following few lines at the top.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(require 'package)
(setq package-load-list '((htmlize t)))
(package-initialize)
#+END_SRC

Okay, that's what's trying to load /htmlize/. Let's try to add it to the =load-path= as follows.

#+BEGIN_SRC emacs-lisp
(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/.local/straight/build/htmlize")
(setq package-load-list '((htmlize t)))
(package-initialize)
#+END_SRC

Now, let's try /Nikola/.

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
$ nikola auto
[2020-08-31 23:30:32] INFO: auto: Rebuilding the site...
Scanning posts..........done!
[2020-08-31 23:30:36] INFO: auto: Serving on http://127.0.0.1:8000/ ...
#+END_EXAMPLE

Woohoo ! It works. Now let's move to the next steps. Writing our first blog post.

* First /Org/ post
Let's create this blog post.

#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
<div class="admonition warning">
<p class="admonition-title">warning</p>
#+END_EXPORT
It is very important to use the =nikola= command line interface to create the post. I spent too much time trying to figure out the /header/ settings.
#+BEGIN_EXPORT html
</div>
#+END_EXPORT

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
$ nikola new_post -1 -f orgmode -t orgmode posts/misc/welcome-back-to-the-old-world.org
#+END_EXAMPLE

Now edit the /org/ file and save it. /Nikola/ should pick it up and render it.

* Yes, I have made more changes
** Theme
I have moved the blog to the /[[https://themes.getnikola.com/v8/willy-theme/][willy-theme]]/ which offers /light/ and *dark* modes and good code highlighting.

** Blog post format
You might have also noticed that there were big changes to the repository. All the blog posts have been converted to /Orgmode/ now, both /pages/ and /posts/.

I used [[https://pandoc.org/][pandoc]] to do the initial conversion from /rst/ to /Orgmode/ as follows.

#+BEGIN_EXAMPLE
$ pandoc --from rst --to org /path/to/file.rst > /path/to/file.org
#+END_EXAMPLE

I know, I know. It does a pretty good initial job but you will need to touch up the posts. Fortunately, I did not have a lot of blog posts yet. Unfortunately, I had enough for the task to take a few days. For me, it was worth it.

* Conclusion
This was a long overdue project, I am happy to finally put it behind me and move foward with something simple that works with my current flow.