What are some of you using to format TaskPaper examples when publishing them in blog posts?
Which among you are exporting…
- TaskPaper into HTML from a tool like @mattgemmell’s TaskPaperRuby?
- Just pasting raw text in a
pre
tag or something? - Using screenshots or animated gifs?
I’ve done 2 and 3.
I have to mention that I mostly use TaskPaper’s notes and header lines, a rarely use the dashed, todo line. In my blog posts, I show examples of how I use TaskPaper for rewriting my thoughts (rewriting my mental models, and something I call have-done lists).
For option 3 (screenshots and animated gifs), it was the simplest approach for Medium articles (like this one) or when including examples in an email for a course.
For option 2 (a TaskPaper example pasted inside a pre
tag), it allowed me to use the <mark>
tag to highlight changes to my list without having to use animated gifs. Here’s an article using option 2.
This second option has some benefits:
- Like I said, I can decorate parts of my list (using
<mark>
) to bring one specific part of my list to the attention of the reader - It’s readable in an RSS reader, since it’s just a
pre
tag - People can copy-paste my examples back into TaskPaper
But it has some disadvantages:
- I have to convert tabs to 2 spaces, to make sure that it formats nicely. That’s not so huge, because if I copy/paste this space-formatted list in TaskPaper, it’ll interpret it correctly back into tabs (thanks Jesse!)
- I have to use a horizontal scroll so that the reader can read longer lines that I don’t want to wrap to new lines (unindented)
I thought of a fourth option:
- a pre tag by default, but a JavaScript parser which converts the pre tag in a bunch of nested
ul
’s, to make sure I don’t rely on horizontal scrolling, and having stuff indent even when wrapping lines. RSS readers will default to thepre
, visitors to my site will get the nicely styled, indented, no-horizontal-scrolling TaskPaper examples.
But then readers would lose the ability to copy-paste the example back into TaskPaper (unless I add a Copy button in the top-right of each JavaScript-augmented example, yuck).
Anybody else blogging TaskPaper examples?