bUwUma

bUwUma is a build system that uses GNU make and a preprocessor written in python to build static, multilingual websites.

This readme only documents the preprocessor. For more information and a quickstart guide on how to use bUwUma, please refer to the article on my website.

HTML Preprocessor Documentation

Syntax

Commands

• All commands must be located within a html comment what starts with <!-- and ends with -->.
• Commands start with a # character, the command must follow the # immediately.
• Everything after the command until the end of the comment or a newline character are considered the argument of the command.

<!-- #command everything here is an argument -->
<!--
    #command everything here is an argument
    #anothercommand more arguments
    While this is a comment right now, it will be UNCOMMENTED in the after the preprocessor finishes!
    #comment This will be a single line html comment after the preprocessor finishes.
-->

• All commands return a string, which can be empty.
• If a comment contains a command, the entire comment will replaced with the return value of the command.
• If there are multiple commands in a command, it will be replaced by all the return values added together.

Variables

• Variable names must only consist of these characters: a-zA-Z0-9_
• A variable with name varname can be used like this: #$(varname)
• A variable usage will be replaced by the value of the variable
• Any variable that has is not defined has empty string as value

General

• Whitespaces around a token are ignored, so <!--#include dir/file--> is the same as <!-- #include dir/file -->
• If a command-comment takes up a whole line, the whole line including the newline character is replaced.

Commands

include

Include the content of a file at the position of the command.

Synopsis: <!-- #include path/to-a-text-file.html -->

Argument: A absolute or relative path to a text file

Return Value: The content of the file or <!-- Could not include '{args}' --> empty string if the file can not be opened.

---

set

Set the value of a variable

Synopsis: Set the value of varname to this is the value: <!-- #set varname this is the value -->

Set the value of varname depending on the value of othervar: <!-- #set varname othervar?{*:fallback,key1:val1,key2:val2...}>

Argument: The first word is the name of the variable, the rest is the value or a dictionary.

Return Value: Empty string You can make the value of varname dependant on the value of another variable othervar by using a dictionary-like syntax described above. In this case, varname will take the first value from the dictionary that matches tha value of othervar. * always everything and can be used as fallback. General wildcards like a* to match everything that starts with a are not supported. Instead of commas , you can also use semicolons ; as separators, but this must be consistend within the map.

default

Same as set, but it sets the variable's value only if it has no value yet.

---

comment

Comment the arguemnts.

Synopsis: <!-- #comment This will stay as comment in the html -->

Argument: Any string

Return Value: The argument in comment tags This can be useful in multiline comments that contain other commands: In that case, the comment tags will be removed and each command replaced with its return value, so if you want to just have commented text in there you can use #comment

uncomment

Uncomment the comment.

Synopsis: <!-- #uncomment This will not be commented -->

Argument: Any string

Return Value: The argument This can be useful when you want to look at the unprocessed html without variables or when your syntax highlighting gets confused by a variable.

---

sidenav

Manage the generation of a content menu which contains links to all headings in your html that have an id. The menu is called sidenav here. An entry is a html heading with a id: <h1 id=myheading>This heading will be linked in the sidenav</h1>

Synopsis: <!-- #sidenav sidenav-command arguments --> sidenav-command must be one of the following:

include

Include the generated sidenav at this position.

Argument: Ignored

Return Value: The generated sidenav

section

Group all following entries in named section.

Argument: The name of the section

Return Value Empty string

name

Use a custom name instead of the heading itself for the link to the next heading.

Argument: The link-name of the next heading

Return Value: Empty string

custom

Include a custom link in the sidenav.

Synopsis: <!-- #sidenav custom href="my-link" name="Go to my link!" -->

Argument: Must be href="..." name="...". Either single ' or double " quotes are required.

Return Value: Empty string

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Pitfalls

• The #include command must not be in the last line of the file
• The maps in set must have at least 2 options
• If you want to use variables in markdown, you have to escape the # with a backslash, so #$(var) becomes \#$(var)