paje

paje is a website creation and deployment system. It is composed of two major parts: 1) A Jekyll scaffolding with a clean minimalist theme, and support for math and bibliographies. 2) A GitHub Actions workflow to deploy the site using GitHub Pages.

Quickstart

1. Create a new GitHub repository for your site. If creating a personal page, which will be deployed to <username>.github.io, the repository should be created with that name.

2. Create a new branch named source, and switch to it (e.g., with git checkout -b source). This is where the source for your site will live. The master branch will be used to deploy the site.

   ⚠️ The master branch will be overwritten when using the configuration provided in the quickstart.

3. Create a file named index.md at the root of your repository. This file will contain the root of your site. For now, just add a title:

   ---
   title: Hello, World
   ---

4. Create a folder named .github/workflows, and within it, create a .yml file, e.g., deploy.yml, with the following contents:

   on:
     workflow_dispatch:
     push:
       branches:
         - source
   
   jobs:
     main:
       runs-on: ubuntu-latest
       steps:
         - uses: actions/checkout@v2
         - uses: jayanthkoushik/paje@v6
           with:
             setupscript: sh build.sh
             targetbranch: master
           env:
             GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

5. Create a file named build.sh. This will be run by paje prior to building your site. For now, add a line copying index.md to the /www folder (paje builds the website from this folder):

   cp index.md /www

6. Commit all three files, and push to GitHub.

7. In the Actions tab on your repository's GitHub page, you should see a new workflow run. This is paje building and deploying the site, and should take just a few minutes to run.

8. Once the workflow is complete (indicated by a check mark), the master branch should have two file, index.html, and 404.html. The site has been built, and is ready to be deployed!

9. On the repository's GitHub page, go to the Pages section under Settings. Here, set the source branch to master, and save.

10. Your website should now be online!

Demo

The test/ folder contains a demo showing various features of paje. The website generated for this folder can be viewed at https://jkoushik.me/paje.

Adding content

paje uses pandoc to convert markdown files to html. Refer to the docs for pandoc's markdown syntax. The present guide will indicate elements which need to be written in a particular manner. Additionally, you can use the templating features of Jekyll to make your pages modular. Refer to the Jekyll docs for details.

⚠️ Note that any files added to the site should be copied to /www in setup.sh.

References

paje using pandoc-crossref to process references to figures, tables, equations. Refer to the docs for details on syntax.

Additional files

You can create additional markdown files to add pages to your site. For each new file, add a line to setup.sh copying that file to /www, e.g. cp newfile.md /www. This will create a /newfile page on your site. Files must start with --- for them to be recognized as pages.

Metadata

Metadata should be specified within --- and --- at the top of the file, using yaml syntax. The default paje template handles the keys shown in the following example. Unless noted otherwise, all attributes are optional.

---
title: Title # Required.
subtitle: Sub-Title # Displayed below the title.
description: Description # Meta data (not displayed).

author:
  # Author list, will be displayed below (sub-)title.
  # Each author name will be rendered as a clickable link,
  # which will open a popover with the author details.
  # Only the 'name' attribute is required.
  - name: Author One
    email: [email protected]
    affiliation:
      # The 'affiliation' attribute should be a list of IDs,
      # with each ID appearing in the 'institute' attribute (see below).
      # The institute name corresponding to each ID will be shown
      # in the author detail popover.
      - 1
      - 2
    equalcontrib:
      # All authors with 'equalcontrib' as 'true'
      # will be considered main authors, and an
      # asterisk will be added after their names.
      # '* Equal contribution' will be displayed
      # after the author list.
      true
  - name: Author Two
    affiliation:
      - 2
    equalcontrib: true

institute:
  # Mapping of institute IDs to names. There should be one
  # for each id that appears in the author list.
  - id: 1
    name: Institute One
  - id: 2
    name: Institute Two

bibliography: references.bib # Bibliography file name--see below for details.

includes:
  # List of files whose content will be added before the main body.
  - inc1.md
  - inc2.html

appendices:
  # Each file in this list will be used to create a
  # separate appendix, added after the main body.
  - app1.md
  - app2.md

extcss:
  # Custom sass files for the page.
  - local1.scss
  - local2.scss

extjs:
  # Custom JavaScript files for the page.
  - local1.js
  - local2.js

skipequal: true # If true, the 'equalcontrib' attribute will be ignored.
nomath: true # If true, math support will be displayed
default_image_extension: svg # Default extension for images ('svg' by default)
---

Math

paje supports typesetting math using KaTeX. Inline and block expressions can be added as shown below:

This is an inline expression: $f(x) = x^2 + 2x + 1$.
This is a block expression:

$$
f(x) = \int_{0^\infty} \exp(-x^2) \mathrm{d}x.
$$

You can also make equations:

$$
\begin{aligned}
f(x)  &= sin(x).\\
f'(x) &= cos(x).
\end{aligned}
$$ {#eq:ex}

Equations can be referenced (@eq:ex) using tags.

Latex definitions are supported, and can be added in any page directly, or in a separate file that's included (via includes in the metadata):

\newcommand{\PP}[2]{\mathbb{P}_{#1}\left[{#2}\right]}
\newcommand{\XX}{\mathcal{X}}
\newcommand{\RR}{\mathbb{R}}

$$
\PP{\RR}{x \in \XX}
$$

Bibliography

You can include a bib file of references, and add citations in your page. Set bibliography in the page metadata to the file name, and in setup.sh, copy the file to /www/_includes (The file name in the metadata should be relative to /www/_includes). Refer to the pandoc guide for syntax used to make citations.

Figures

Images can be added as figures with captions and links:

This is a figure:

![This is the figure caption.](img_path){#fig:figid}

Note the surrounding empty lines! You can refer to the figure (@fig:figid) like
any other reference.

The default extension for images is .svg, so it can be omitted when specifying the path.

The default paje theme has a dark mode. When this is enabled (either based on user device preference, or the dropdown menu), figures will have their colors inverted. Alternatively, figures can have a separate image to be used in the dark theme. For a figure with source '/path/to/fig.ext', if there is a file '/path/to/fig_dark.ext', it will be used automatically. A dark mode image can also be specified explicity by setting 'darksrc' for the figure:

![This figure will use `alt_img.png` in dark mode](img.png){#fig:figid darksrc='alt_img.png'}

Setting darksrc to '' will suppress the default behavior of inverting colors in the dark mode. This can be used for figures that should appear the same regardless of mode.

Sub-figures can be created by wrapping figures in a div:

<div id="fig:subs">

![Sub-figure 1. You can specify the width](img1){#fig:sub1 width=2in}

![Sub-figure 2. You can specify both the width and height](img2){#fig:sub2 width=3in height=2in}

This is the caption for the whole figure.

</div>

You can refer to either the whole figure (@fig:subs), or to individual
sub-figures (@fig:sub1,@fig:sub2).

Tables

Note that support for tables is finicky. They can be added as such:

This is a table:

<!-- prettier-ignore-start -->

Header     col1     col2   col3
---------  ------  ------  ------
Row1       1       2       3
Row2       11      22      333
Header col1 col2 col3

: Table caption. {#tbl:tblid}

<!-- prettier-ignore-end -->

The main body cannot contain any blank lines. Columns will be aligned based on the position of the header with respect to the '---'s below it. The example table (@tbl:tblid) above will have columns aligned left, left, center, and right respectively.

Acronyms

Acronyms are supported, using the syntax of the LaTeX acronym package. Definitions will be shown in parenthesis for the first occurence of an acronym, and only on hover (using abbr tags) for subsequent occurences

\acrodef{CMU}{Carnegie Mellon University}
\acrodef{USA}{United States of America}
\acrodef{SSN}{social security number}

* This will be shown with the definition in brackets since it
  is the first time the abbreviation is used: \ac{CMU}.
* This will now be shown only as the abbreviation: \ac{CMU}.
* This will be only shown as the abbreviation even though
  it has not been used before: \acs{USA}.
* This will be pluralized: \acp{SSN}.