summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/manuals/haunt/Introduction.html
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'manuals/haunt/Introduction.html')
-rw-r--r--manuals/haunt/Introduction.html137
1 files changed, 137 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/manuals/haunt/Introduction.html b/manuals/haunt/Introduction.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6fe6c4e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/manuals/haunt/Introduction.html
@@ -0,0 +1,137 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
+<html>
+<!-- Copyright (C) 2015 David Thompson
+
+
+Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
+under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
+any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
+Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
+copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
+Documentation License". -->
+<!-- Created by GNU Texinfo 6.5, http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/ -->
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8">
+<title>Introduction (Haunt Reference Manual)</title>
+
+<meta name="description" content="Introduction (Haunt Reference Manual)">
+<meta name="keywords" content="Introduction (Haunt Reference Manual)">
+<meta name="resource-type" content="document">
+<meta name="distribution" content="global">
+<meta name="Generator" content="makeinfo">
+<link href="index.html#Top" rel="start" title="Top">
+<link href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" rel="index" title="Concept Index">
+<link href="index.html#SEC_Contents" rel="contents" title="Table of Contents">
+<link href="index.html#Top" rel="up" title="Top">
+<link href="Installation.html#Installation" rel="next" title="Installation">
+<link href="index.html#Top" rel="prev" title="Top">
+<style type="text/css">
+<!--
+a.summary-letter {text-decoration: none}
+blockquote.indentedblock {margin-right: 0em}
+blockquote.smallindentedblock {margin-right: 0em; font-size: smaller}
+blockquote.smallquotation {font-size: smaller}
+div.display {margin-left: 3.2em}
+div.example {margin-left: 3.2em}
+div.lisp {margin-left: 3.2em}
+div.smalldisplay {margin-left: 3.2em}
+div.smallexample {margin-left: 3.2em}
+div.smalllisp {margin-left: 3.2em}
+kbd {font-style: oblique}
+pre.display {font-family: inherit}
+pre.format {font-family: inherit}
+pre.menu-comment {font-family: serif}
+pre.menu-preformatted {font-family: serif}
+pre.smalldisplay {font-family: inherit; font-size: smaller}
+pre.smallexample {font-size: smaller}
+pre.smallformat {font-family: inherit; font-size: smaller}
+pre.smalllisp {font-size: smaller}
+span.nolinebreak {white-space: nowrap}
+span.roman {font-family: initial; font-weight: normal}
+span.sansserif {font-family: sans-serif; font-weight: normal}
+ul.no-bullet {list-style: none}
+-->
+</style>
+
+
+</head>
+
+<body lang="en">
+<a name="Introduction"></a>
+<div class="header">
+<p>
+Next: <a href="Installation.html#Installation" accesskey="n" rel="next">Installation</a>, Previous: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Top</a>, Up: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
+</div>
+<hr>
+<a name="Introduction-1"></a>
+<h2 class="chapter">1 Introduction</h2>
+
+<p>Haunt is a hackable static site generator written in Guile Scheme. A
+static site generator assists an author with generating the HTML pages
+that they publish on the web. Unlike &ldquo;content management systems&rdquo;
+such as Wordpress or Drupal, static site generators are not dynamic
+web applications (complete with a relational database) that build
+pages on-the-fly. Instead, web pages are built in advance, on the
+author&rsquo;s computer, and copied to a web server when it is time to
+publish changes. The consequence of this design is that the web
+server no longer needs to run a complex, potentially insecure web
+application that connects to a database to retrieve data. Static
+files can be served easily by any generic web server. Since there is
+no web application or database server to deal with, static websites
+are easier to maintain, more secure, and resistant to high web traffic
+(&ldquo;slashdotting.&rdquo;) Furthermore, the entire website is stored in
+plain text, which allows the files to be version-controlled rather
+than kept in a relational database with no concept of history that
+needs to be backed up regularly.
+</p>
+<p>At the time that Haunt was conceived, there existed literally hundreds
+of other static site generators. Why add another one? Haunt
+differentiates itself from most other static site generators in that
+it aspires to the Emacs philosophy of &ldquo;practical software freedom.&rdquo;
+Not only is the source code available under a Free Software license,
+as most static site generators are, it is designed to be easily hacked
+and extended without altering the core source code. Haunt
+purposefully blurs the line between document and program, author and
+programmer, by embracing the notion of data as code. A Haunt-based
+website is not simply data, but a computer program. This design
+strategy encourages authors to automate repetitive tasks and empowers
+them to extend the software with their own ideas.
+</p>
+<p>To make such a system work well, a general-purpose, extensible
+programming language is needed. A traditional configuration file
+format simply will not do. The programming language that we feel is
+best suited to this task is Scheme, a clean and elegant dialect of
+Lisp. We believe that by giving authors the full expressive power of
+Scheme, they will be able to produce better websites and make better
+use of their time than with less programmable systems and less capable
+programming languages. Authors should feel empowered to hack the
+system to make it do what they want rather than what some programmer
+decided they should want. And perhaps most importantly, building
+websites with Haunt should be <em>fun</em>.
+</p>
+<p>Websites written in Haunt are described as purely functional programs
+that accept &ldquo;posts&rdquo;, text documents containing arbitrary metadata,
+as input and transform them into complete HTML pages using Scheme
+procedures. Haunt has no opinion about what markup language authors
+should use to write their posts and will happily work with any format
+for which a &ldquo;reader&rdquo; procedure exists. Likewise, Haunt also has no
+opinion about how authors should structure their sites, but has sane
+defaults. Currently, there exist helpful &ldquo;builder&rdquo; procedures that
+do common tasks such as generating a blog or Atom feed. While the
+built-in features may be enough for some, they surely will not be
+enough for all. Haunt&rsquo;s Scheme API empowers authors to easily tweak
+existing components, write replacements, or add entirely new features
+that do things no else has thought to do yet.
+</p>
+<p>Happy haunting!
+</p>
+<hr>
+<div class="header">
+<p>
+Next: <a href="Installation.html#Installation" accesskey="n" rel="next">Installation</a>, Previous: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="p" rel="prev">Top</a>, Up: <a href="index.html#Top" accesskey="u" rel="up">Top</a> &nbsp; [<a href="index.html#SEC_Contents" title="Table of contents" rel="contents">Contents</a>][<a href="Concept-Index.html#Concept-Index" title="Index" rel="index">Index</a>]</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+</body>
+</html>