Publ: Development Blog

Publ 0.6.8, Authl 0.4.3

Posted (3 years ago)

Some pretty big new features added. First, in Authl:

  • Major documentation improvements
  • Bug fixes with Fediverse instance caching
  • All providers now normalize to the same profile format
  • Some basic spam prevention for the email provider
  • 100% unit test coverage on the Fediverse provider (which is now using mastodon.py instead of a hand-rolled OAuth client)

And in Publ:

  • Fenced code now uses <figure> and <figcaption> instead of ad-hoc <div>s for its layout, and the overall HTML semantic has been greatly improved
  • Individual code blocks are now configurable with respect to highlighting and line numbering
  • The user object now provides a user profile and separates the identity URL from the familiar name

Currently I am getting quite frustrated with the state of this documentation site. I am working towards making Publ itself more amenable to documentation via pydoc/readthedocs, and transitioning this site only to be for demos and usage examples. I’m not sure how to make the templating guide and markdown extensions fit in with RTD, though.

I’ve long wanted to do some sort of automated documentation generation, though, and as the various mechanisms in Publ get more complicated this starts to feel way more important. This is definitely something I could use some help on, for anyone who’s interested.

It’s also becoming more and more apparent that there needs to be some sort of online post editor, and I really ought to get around to building the simple one I’ve had in mind for a while. This is long-overdue.

Anyway. This update is a lot of fun. See some of the stuff you can do with it!