====================================
Thot - the static site generator
====================================
:Info: See `github `_ for the latest source.
:Author: W-Mark Kubacki 

Derived from Arthur Koziel’s `pyll `_.

About
=====
With **Thot** you can write your sites, documentation or even your blog with
your favourite text editor and then have everything rendered to static files.

*Thot* understands Markdown_, RST_, Creole_ and Trac_’s markup for your content.
You can still write everything as plaintext or HTML as well if you like.
For templating (embedding your content into a design) you can chose between Mako_ and Jinja2_.

.. _Markdown: http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax
.. _RST:      http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html
.. _Creole:   http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Creole1.0
.. _Trac:     http://trac.edgewall.org/wiki/WikiFormatting
.. _Mako:     http://www.makotemplates.org/
.. _Jinja2:   http://jinja.pocoo.org/

The nice thing about *Thot* is that you can replace almost everything by your own
plugins easily.

Some blogs powered by Thot:

- `Tsu’s blog on EVE Online `_

License
========
Licensed under the Reciprocal Public License, Version 1.5
(http://www.opensource.org/licenses/rpl1.5).

… which means you can use it as-is even for commercial purposes, free of charge, as long
as you notify me about any modifications you’ve made along with a patch with them.
And yes, of course, your templates are not covered by that — though I hereby kindly ask
you to add/leave the “`meta-generator: Thot`” entry in your HTML’s HEAD for statistical purposes.

Usage
========

Quickstart
------------
Run ``thot --quickstart mysite`` to have directory “`mysite`” created with a basic site
skeleton. You will be asked a series of questions regarding default values for author’s name
and such by that script. Your answers will result in file ``_lib/settings.cfg``.

``quickstart`` obeys the optional parameter `-t `, with “shortname” being
the shortname for a recognized templating engine: `mako` or `jinja2`, Mako being preferred.

Run ``thot`` to generate a site. The command looks for files with extensions .htm/.html,
.xml, .rst and .md/.markdown; parses them and passes the results to your template(s).
— “Parsing” means transforming the markup (for example Markdown or RST) to HTML. —
Directories and files that start with a dot or an underscore will be ignored,
everything else (i.e. images) will be copied. The the results will be available
in “`_output`”.

Basics
--------
Your templates go into the “`_templates`” directory of your site.
Every page has a template, either “`self`” (thus none, i.e. for XML, RSS or Atom feeds)
or any of your own liking determined by “`template:`” keyword.

Every page consists of one “header” (with keywords) and one “content” section, in that order.
It looks like this:

::

    title: Hello World
    template: post.mak
    category: article
    tags: [static blog, CDN, like Jekyll]

    This is the content. Hello World!

The **header** is formatted in YAML_. You can access it from within the content by
variable “`page`”. With *Mako* by `${ page['title'] }` or *Jinja2* by `{{ page.title }}` for
example.

**Content** can be anything, from plaintext over html to markup, which is determined by
the file extension. Although the content will be subject to rendering by the templating
engine of your choice, you are free to abstain from using it.

Default settings can be found in “`_lib/settings.cfg`”, which is parsed as *YAML*.

.. _YAML: http://yaml.org/spec/1.1/

Reference
===========

Headers
----------
This list is not complete, but you can use the following keywords. At least “`title`” has to be set:

title
  The page’s title. Used within HTML’s `