Week1 : Principles and practices, project management
Version control, using Mercurial
I followed the documents and the installation process on Windows using cygwin and it went like a breeze. I had to remind my self every time don't forget to commit changes.
Version control with git
I have used git sometime ago, I just needed a concise reminder. This site was pretty much what I was looking for.
Later I found also this site which has more in depth info
https://www.atlassian.com/git/tutorials/comparing-workflows/
It worked smoothly at the beginning, but then when we had to generate our own key and use git-lab it didn't work as I expected.
Personal Web Page ( Project Management)
I was able to build initial pages of the web page first using SeaMonkey and latter after watching the video tutorial by Massimo Menichinelli I was encouraged to use Brackets and learned about CSS in the process. I started with the style sheet example provided with Brackets i didn't modify much of the style or the background colors. Later I started to modify my sheet gradually. I decided to leave that for now and rather focus on building up my web page; inhabiting it with more content. The documentation process I would say is the most difficult mental obstacle one must overcome ( ps. PyRoom worked for me when I had much to write ) . I think adopting the habit of documenting details of work requires a bit of organization and coming up with one's own work flow. The same also applies to links and citation to previous work or tutorials that I used as guides and help getting those noted down as one works is crucial because when you are focused on achieving some progress you end up with multiple browser windows opened at the same moment but once you are done it's difficult to come up with a summary that could provide a simple path for others to follow. NOTE DOWN THE LINKS ON A SEPARATE TEXT FILE WITH TAGS YOU CAN UNDERSTAND.
Emacs org mode
In week 7 I started using Emacs text editor's org mode which I found to be extremely helpfully in getting documentation done fast and easy. It supports exporting as html, Latex and PDF so it makes converting any text I write easily to a web page. There are many useful resources online on using org mode but it is as simple as downloading emacs 24 or later which comes with org mode pre installed, then creating a file with .org extension.
After creating the file ctrl+x ctrl+f
I start with the options ctrl+c ctrl+e t to insert export options
Setting Up the Page for Export
I change one the option line as follows
#+OPTIONS: H:3 num:t toc:t \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:t -:t f:t *:t <:t
#+OPTIONS: H:3 num:nil toc:nil \n:nil @:t ::t |:t ^:t -:t f:t *:t <:t
to remove the table of content and numbering of headlines.
Sections and Topics
* headline
* a second headline
** a sub headline
*** and so forth
- bullet points
1- numbered bullet point
Formatting the text
and to format the text this is what we can use
*bold* ---> bold
/italic/ ---> italic
_underlined_ ---> underlined
~code~ ---> code
+strike-through+ ---> Strike-through
Links and images
[[]] add path to image between those double brackets to include images
[[][]] add path to a hyperlink and a name to appear for this link between first and second double brackets
Linking Videos
according to the org-mode manual adding the following line where a local video file is to be embeded in the exported html.
#+ATTR_HTML: :controls controls :width 350
#+BEGIN_video
#+HTML: <source src="movie.mp4" type="video/mp4">
Your browser does not support the video tag.
#+END_video
I have inserted the iframe from the vimeo embeded src as follows
#+HTML: <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/192681629" width="640" height="468" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen allowfullscreen></iframe>
While for those who want to embed a youtube video the following link explains how it can be done for emacs and org-mode.
http://endlessparentheses.com/embedding-youtube-videos-with-org-mode-links.html
I tried to use it initially but I encountered some errors, and the previous method was much straight forward.
CSS file and Styling
adding css file with export options
#+STYLE: <link href ="../main.css" rel ="stylesheet" type ="text/css">
after an upgrade to org mode from 7.9 to 8.0 the any export to html had a busted style. I found the reason in the following link http://orgmode.org/worg/org-8.0.html#sec-5-1
apparently the html specific option have been changed so for to include a CSS file the option has to be as follows.
#+HTML_HEAD: <link href ="../main.css" rel ="stylesheet" type ="text/css">
so now I have to go back to all my pages including this one to change the option.
Navigation Buttons
adding a home and up links also using export options
#+LINK_HOME: ../index.html
#+LINK_UP: ../assignment.html