So I started off with a simple bash script: bin/new-article

#! /bin/bash
# Give it a title, and it'll give you an article template.

title=$@
article=$(echo "$title" | iconv -c -t ascii//TRANSLIT | sed -E 's/[~^]+//g' | sed -E 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9]+/-/g' | sed -E 's/^-+|-+$//g' | tr A-Z a-z).html

# Add to page tree
echo $article >>articles.ptree
entrynum=$(wc -l <articles.ptree)
let "entrynum=entrynum-2"

# Make article file
cat >$article.pm <<EOF
#lang pollen

◊(define-meta entry-number "$entrynum"
              title "$title"
              entry-date "$(date -I)")


EOF
# Open it for editing
vim $article.pm

Then I started writing an article about philisophical skepticism, and when I realized it would take much longer than a day to complete, There’s a reason you don’t see it here yet :D I found out the problem with this setup—it assumes you publish things in the order you write them.

As a result, I’ve now make a wip/ directory for everything to stay in. May it never become a graveyard. And now, I have two scripts. bin/new-article is now for making a new article in the wip/ directory:

#! /bin/bash
# Give it a title, and it'll give you an article template.

title=$@
article=$(echo "$title" | iconv -c -t ascii//TRANSLIT | sed -E 's/[~^]+//g' | sed -E 's/[^a-zA-Z0-9]+/-/g' | sed -E 's/^-+|-+$//g' | tr A-Z a-z).html

# Make article file
cat >wip/$article.pm <<EOF
#lang pollen

◊(define-meta entry-number ""
              title "$title"
              entry-date "")

EOF
# Open it for editing
vim wip/$article.pm

And the new bin/publish takes it out of wip/ and adds it to the ptree and adds the date and entry number:

#! /bin/bash
# Give it an article in wip/, and it'll "publish" it.

fname=$(basename $@)
article=$(echo "$fname" | sed 's/\.html.*$//g')

# Move article
mv wip/$article.* .

# Add to page tree
echo $article.html >>articles.ptree
entrynum=$(wc -l <articles.ptree)
let "entrynum=entrynum-2"

# Update page number
sed -i "s/entry-number \".*\"/entry-number \"$entrynum\"/g" $article.html.pm
sed -i "s/entry-date \".*\"/entry-date \"$(date -I)\"/g" $article.html.pm

Much more flexible.

(As for the part 1 in the title, I just want to leave myself room for potential sequels. What if later I decide to write about writing? I’d have to come up with a new title!)