Programming approach: the goal should be to avoid magic. However, for users that do not have experience with Lua or programming, it would be great to have a one-step process for installing and using plugins, as well as configuration. It's best to think of this as a veneer or "UI" on top of a no-frills no-magic, explicit-over-implicit library.
Future Mac app... how to dispay thumbnails and theme information? Could have an auto_register(t) function that takes a table and looks for by-convention fields like t[info] and t[use]. Plugins could opt in to exporting these fields.
Plugins should be distributed via Luarocks, rather than some bespoke distribution system.
It would be great to foster a culture of "hack and learn".
- Lettersmith mac app should be a tool you can use without knowing anything about programming. At worst, a manifest file. At best, just click-to-configure.
- Modifying a theme should be something you can do with entry-level HTML and CSS chops.
- From there, writing Lettersmith and plugins as LuaLit could be a good way to introduce people to programming.
Here's a crazy idea: we bring in YAML because Jekyll made that standard. However, Lua was a data language before it was a scripting language. What if we created an alternative doc plugin that gave you full scripting power by running headmatter through loadstring? Is this useful?
---
date = "2015-03-02",
now = os.time()
---
We could then use variables in the contents itself:
The current time is {{now}}.
Can we box globals to prevent them from leaking into the Lettersmith namespace?
Embedding Lua http://lua-users.org/wiki/BuildingLua