#+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 : [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

warning

#+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
#+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.