1. State of the art, project management and documentation
This week I didn't really work on defining my final project idea. I've been sick for a few days, so just tried to keep up by doing the assignment for the week and building the documentation structure...
I'm pretty familiar with some of the tools used like version control, markdown, terminal etc. So that helped but haven't used them all together in this way. So I had some fun customizing and browsing around.
Research
This week's research mainly consisted of learning these tools using the tutorials provided and some google. It was nice, I'm liking this way of documenting!
"Inspirational block quote here! I'll have to get back to you on that one, but nice to know how to do it - LB"
Useful links
- Fiore's tutorial
- This tutorial on the class page (especially how to edit the mkdoc :)
- Getting started with mkdoc.yml file
Setting up the SSH key
Tried to rush it and left the default email in by accident. Whoops! Deleted the key and generated a new one with the terminal commands provided here and popped it into the settings in Gitlab [Generating an SSH key] (https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/help/ssh/README#generating-a-new-ssh-key-pair)
Also Fiore's tutorial has been very helpful here:
* *I notice I'm becoming one of those people who writes documentation but doesn't explain the steps that already feel "normal" to me. Hmmm. I'll have a think to think what I think about that.
Customizing text, fonts, colors in the mkdoc
I customized some basic stuff to change the look of the page. I love the font Karla, we use it for everything where I work, so I'm using it here too. I think you can basically look up any Google Font and use it. I liked the idea of having a special font for code, so I specified one for that as well. Find a Google Font here
Teal is my favourite color so, I used that for now, I found the name of the color codes here: Squidfunk's tutorial
* I have to say again: I'm really liking markdown and Gitlab
Ah yes! I will make a favicon but not right now, so just put the line there and will uncomment it once I've created and uploaded one.
# This is some of the code I changed in the mkdoc :)
site_name: Loes Bogers
site_description: Loes' Fabricademy documentation
site_url: https://class.textile-academy.org/2020/loes.bogers/
repo_url: https://gitlab.fabcloud.org/academany/fabricademy/2020/students/loes.bogers
site_author: Loes Bogers
docs_dir: docs
site_dir: _site
copyright: Copyright 2019 Loes Bogers - Creactive Commons Attribution Non-commercial
theme:
#uncomment line below when you made a favicon lollll
# favicon: 'assets/images/favicon.ico'
name: material
font:
text: 'karla'
code: 'ubuntu mono'
# try other colors https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/getting-started/#primary-colors
palette:
primary: "cyan"
accent: "purple"
And this is the result! Kaleidoscopic, isn't it...
"so kaleidoscopic!"
Working offline
Since I'm working on a book project where I'll be using some of these tools as well, I also tried cloning my repository into the GitHub Desktop app using the URL provided in the back-end of the project using the SSH dropdown.
"screenshot of dashboard"
It's pretty straightforward, you go find the files locally and them edit them with an editor. And it tells you whether you have any commits that need pulling (when changes were made somewhere else) or pushing (when you make changes locally but haven't updated the master repository yet). Nice and easy! I also loved learning Mercurial on the command line though (forever grateful @Zaerc) I'm used to Brackets from back when I did Fabacademy. Oh sweet memories from 2015
But for another project I'll be using MacDown, which gives a nice simultaneous preview! Pretty nice too. Let's see which one I'll end up using.
"screenshot of Macdown editor"
Updating the info on the index page
Coming soon