Test Post - This is a web page.

There's not much here. Just words.

And you're reading them.

We've become obsessed with fancy designs, responsive layouts, and scripts that do magical things.

But the most powerful tool on the web is still words.

I wrote these words, and you're reading them: that's magical.

I'm in a little city in British Columbia; you're probably somewhere else. I wrote this early in the morning, June 20th, 2013; you're reading it at a different time. I wrote this on my laptop; you could be reading this on your phone, a tablet or a desktop.

You and I have been able to connect because I wrote this and you're reading it. That's the web. Despite our different locations, devices, and time-zones we can connect here, on a simple HTML page.

I wrote this in a text editor. It's 6 kB. I didn't need a Content Management System, a graphic designer, or a software developer. There's not much code on this page at all: just simple markup for paragraphs, hierarchy, and emphasis.

I remember teaching my daughter to code HTML when she was 8. The first thing she wrote was a story about a squirrel.

=> http://bizbox.ca/kidlet

She wasn't "writing HTML"; she was sharing something with the world. She couldn't believe that she could write a story on our home computer, and then publish it for the world to see. She didn't care about HTML; she cared about sharing her stories.

You are still reading.

Think about all the things you could communicate with a simple page like this. If you're a businessperson, you could sell something. If you're a teacher, you could teach something. If you're an artist, you could show something you've made. And if your words are good, people will read them.

If you're a web designer, I challenge you to think about the words first. Instead of starting with a style guide or a Photoshop mockup, start with words on a page.

What do you have to say? If you don't know, there's not much use in adding all that other cruft. Just start with one page, with a single focus. Write it and publish it, and then iterate on that. Every time you're about to add something, ask yourself: does this help me communicate better? Will that additional styling, image, or hyperlink give my audience more understanding? If the answer is "no," don't add it.

At its heart, web design should be about words. Words don't come after the design is done. Words are the beginning, the core, the focus.

Start with words.

Cheers,
Justin Jackson
=> http://twitter.com/mijustin

Do you like to make stuff on the web? Subscribe to my newsletter.
=> https://justinjackson.ca/newsletter

Translations

Slovenian - thanks to Leon %u0160krilec
=> https://justinjackson.ca/words_sl.html
=> https://www.linkedin.com/in/leon-C5A1krilec-67317792/

Catalan - thanks to Jordi Nebot
=> https://justinjackson.ca/words_ca.html
=> http://jordinebot.me/

Afrikaans %u2013 thanks to Leo Gopal
=> https://justinjackson.ca/words_af.html
=> https://twitter.com/LeoGopal

Brazilian Portuguese %u2013 thanks to Heitor Belloni
=> https://justinjackson.ca/words_pt-BR.html
=> https://twitter.com/heitorbelloni

Chinese %u2013 thanks to Zhuangda Zhu
=> https://justinjackson.ca/words_zh.html
=> https://twitter.com/ZhuangdaZhu


Original:

=> https://justinjackson.ca/words.html

This test post meant to test rewriting the original into Gemtext, instead of HTML. Justin used simple, basic, minimal HTML markup to craft his post, which is great, but it's still a tag-based markup.

I prefer something closer to raw, plain text that can be converted with a utility. But on Gemini, no conversion is needed. Gemini browsers process Gemtext, which is a subset of an unofficial Markdown spec called CommonMark. Gemtext supports blockquote, unordered lists, code blocks, and headings 1 through 3.

Justin used bolding and italicizing within his post, but Gemtext supports neither. I have learned that I don't need to italicize content. It would be nice if Gemtext supported bolding, but if I need to emphasize in a BOLD manner, I capitalize the text, which on the internet means shouting. Shouting is emphasizing.

Obviously, this page is the HTML version of what I typed. Here's the text version.

=> http://sora.soupmode.com/2021/04/03/test-post-this-is-a-web-page.txt

And the JSON version, using my own JSON key-value setup.

=> http://sora.soupmode.com/2021/04/03/test-post-this-is-a-web-page.json

I saved the .txt version of this post to my hard drive. Even though I typed this file in Gemtext, I chose to save it as a .txt file, instead of a .gmi or even a .md file.

.txt is an older file extension that is probably universally understood.

And even though I know that I use Gemtext markup in this .txt file, I prefer to think of it as text/plain, and it can be converted to other formats if necessary.

I used pandoc to convert this .txt file to an HTML file.

pandoc justwords.txt -f markdown autolink_bare_uris hard_line_breaks -t html -s -o justwords.html

In Gemtext, newlines are preserved as line-breaks for succeeding lines. No need to add the two blank spaces at the end of the lines as with Markdown.

But for my file, I had to use "hard_line_breaks" option to preserve the newlines in the HTML output.

In Gemtext, raw URLs are converted to links by Gemini browsers, provided the URLs are listed one per line, and the URL lines start with the greater-than sign, followed by the equals sign, and maybe a space before the URL.

But Markdown converters may need raw URLs surrounded by the less-than and greater-than symbols. Typora does not need this. That editor displays raw URLs as clickable links, despite the lack of less-than and greater-than markup.

Web browser extensions that convert Markdown files to HTML also do not need the less-than and greater-than symbols to bookend the URLs.

I add to use the "autolink_bare_uris" option to make raw URLs clickable links in the HTML output.

=> https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/584098/how-to-convert-plaintext-to-html-with-clickable-links

Another way to type up the original plain text content is not to use any markup, such as Textile, CommonMark, nor Gemtext, and then run the text/plain content through a utility to create other text formats, such as text/markdown or text/gemini. And then that text/markdown file can be converted to HTML.

The issue with Markdown is with the newlines not being preserved for stacked lines. The two blank spaces are needed to make it work in Markdown viewing browser extensions.

I just noticed that instead of using the two blank spaces at the end of lines, it's possible to use the backslash instead, at least for CommonMark. I dislike invisible formatting commands.

I used this pandoc command line setup to convert a plain text file to Markdown.

pandoc justwords.txt -f markdown autolink_bare_uris hard_line_breaks -t markdown -s -o justwords-b.md

The output contained the less-than and greater-than symbols around the raw URLs, and the backslash was added to the end of stacked lines.

Unfortunately, the Markdown Preview Plus Chrome extension does not recognize the backslash as a valid command.

I may have to create my own utility that can do two things:

The problem mainly has to do with handling raw URLs and stacked lines.

-30-