There has been an itch to do some web development even though I have a pending keyboard soldering project and reading that I have to do along involving stocks, bonds and crypto but it’s because I finally came to the realization of having a reason for making a website.

Learning to Code for its own sake makes no sense

The thing about learning to code, skill that is encouraged and campaigned to be learned for a while, is something that, by itself, is a useless skillset because if there is no need for it if there is no reaon to learn it. This also includes web development of any kind (as I don’t consider web development “programming”). The thing is when you have nothing to make a website about, why make a website for its own sake? So it’s why, when I realized that I could remake a personal compilation of H. P. Lovecraft stories, that I got the idea to make a website where people can download a PDF, LaTeX, Markdown, groff, or downloadable offline or online HTML ebook of the very compliation of stories.

Reinventing The Wheel with different motives.

Usually when someone from an earlier time makes a website that works and is functionally working as intended, the webmaster is going to effectively forget about improving the website and settle with using the function as it was originally designed and that’s a good thing. But when new technologies that can improve the website come along, usually the webmaster is going to not adopt them because the new technologies call for new paradigms to consider and it makes for an expensive (time-wise) proposition to effectively remake a website. And that’s when someone else, a new webmaster, has to effectively come along and make the new website either for the old webmaster or for themselves for whatever reasons and concerns.

The Purpose of Project Lovecraft

Let’s get something out of the way: project Backlog Markup Lanaguage (BLML) is a patent failure that I’ll have to get back to at some point for the sake of completion even though the use-cases for the XML based markup language is nonexistent when I’ve become convinced that this is a JSON world and there are better alternatives to XML.

So with that being said, I’ll say that Project Lovecraft will be and is already a success and the reason is quite simple: it’s a private literature preservation project.

The thing about preservation projects, whether they are video games or literature, is that it’s a simple matter of collecting, compiling, and storing digitized assets with some liberties at the discretion of the preservation project supervisor such as making enhancements to the software or rewriting the literature in a new format that makes it convenient and enjoyable without altering the content.

I’ve done this before sort of.

In 2014, I set up a shitty website that featured downloadable instructions on how to setup a XMPP account with a XMPP protocol supporting client for Windows, Linux, and MacOS so I’ve done this before. The only question is the preperation of the products that will be distributed if whether they are going to require much time or money but I say it’ll be worth it as it’ll require me to learn about technology such as LaTeX, groff, Markdown (and with that Pandoc), and maybe dip my toes a bit in the wacky world of typography and typefont design. I’ll have to get also familiar with InDesign, so perhaps I should include an InDesign file for the public to check out unless someone convinces me to otherwise do a version of the compilation on Scribus.

Draft 3.pdf

So with that being settled here’s the first draft PDF available to the public who is reading this blog post to check out. It’s a big one mind you. For feedback please email me at sono at so dash no dot xyz.

Download

Update 8/18/2022 3:06:56 PM - Draft 5.pdf

A new PDF generated using LaTeX. It’s much lighter than the one genrated using Microsoft Word 2010 although I have a suspicion that I should instead go for a new license for a recent version (2019) to see if the PDFs generated by that latter version are as light as what LaTeX can produce but something tells me that’s going to be both a waste of time and money.

Adobe Garamond Pro has been used in this LaTeX generated PDF version and I have a feeling that I’ll be busy cleaning up the LaTeX code before I put it up on a git repository publically online.

I’m undecided if, like the Word generated PDF, I should color the Chapter titles to blue (Prussian blue) or if I should leave it black to make the printing cheaper for anyone thta wants to print a copy for themselves (as this is partially the point for this LaTeX version).

I also have to go over by reading the text to see where any italicizing or embolding of text is necessary so draft 5 will take time.