Blogging with Pandoc
I am always on the lookout for ways to lower the barrier for people to not only start blogging, but also to help them retain ownership of their content and keep it evergreen. I spent some time this weekend with Pandoc to create a simple little blogging framework that I am calling Panblog.
Blogging Simplified
If you have read my Asciidoctor series or my Plain Text series, you already know that I like to keep my workflows as simple and as close to plain text as possible. Plain text really is the only evergreen syntax that will be around long after applications sunset and frameworks are deprecated.
However, by reading through those series, you can see that asciidoctor can be almost as complex as actual coding, depending on the result you are looking for. And, plain text blogging can be... well, too plain.
Therefore, I wanted to find some middle ground where it is not too convoluted to write docs, close to plain text, but still can produce aesthetically pleasing HTML. I also wanted something that was easy to maintain and update.