

Show HN: gist.io, blogless writing for hackers - idan
http://gist.io

======
idan
Author here.

Generally, if you have features you want, file 'em here:
<https://github.com/idan/gistio/issues>

Stuff I'd like to do given the time:

* Add RestructuredText support

* Add a sign-in-with-github option, and turn this into a minimalist blogging platform. Comments (gist comments), index page (showing any gists of yours that have been gist.io'd), authoring (I like writing in IA writer, maybe an experience similar to that, but with auto-saving.)

* Maybe some kind of means for controlling cache (right now gists are cached for one minute).

~~~
quadhome
I love the minimalism!

If you add sign-in-with-github support, be sure you start hosting the HTML and
JS off a different domain.

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msutherl
This looks really great, but I have to take issue with your choice of
typeface. While the description in the Google font database makes it out to be
an award winning face for literature optimized for reading, its exaggerated
serifs and uneven rhythm give it a kind of medieval / enlightened manuscript
feel that just seems anachronistic and weird. For a general service that
integrates with Github and shouldn't really be 'saying' anything with its
design, I would recommend a more classic, rhythmic serif face along the lines
of Minion, Caslon, Palatino, Baskerville, Hoefler Text, or even Georgia, which
reads quite well at 14-16px.

Granted I'm a designer, I personally wouldn't use this service based on the
typeface choice alone. It just clashes too much with the neutrality of
everything else on my system and on websites I use commonly.

~~~
idan
Sorry to hear that. I don't find the typeface to be as good as my current
favorite workhorse serif (Elena, from process type, which I licensed for
<http://gazit.me> )—but I don't find it to be objectionable or harmful to
legibility either. Quite the opposite, I found it to be a serif with
personality—less so than the commonly-used Skolar—and it reminded me of Elena
(the shape of the adnate serifs, the slightly negative stress, the relatively-
tall x-height, and the lowercase 'e' in particular).

I'll revisit type choices at some point, but right now the goal was to get
something up, and as much as I love the faces you've specified, half I'm sick
of and the other half aren't sufficiently ubiquitous.

~~~
moe
I have to agree with msutherl (all subjective).

For me your font-size is a notch too large, which amplifies the weaknesses of
the typeface. Personally I'd stick with Palatino[1] or Georgia for
readability.

Mind you, this is perfectionist quibbles. Your font isn't _bad_. Just myself
I'd probably hit the readability bookmarklet if I wanted to read a longer text
on your site.

[1] <http://ksjoberg.com/vim-esckeys.html>

------
idan
It's kind of like readability for gists.

~~~
hollerith
If that is all it is, why can't the reader just use Readability (or Readable)?

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melvinmt
Great stuff. I see a great use case for this: when people want to write a
reply to a post they can just fork the original gist and write their reply
above it, like this: <http://gist.io/3140173>

In this way you can regard the list of forks at the right of the gist page as
the list of comments (screenshot: <http://cl.ly/image/1803161N432H>).

~~~
mgualt
There seem to be comments on gists already -- I am trying to figure out how
they are dealt with in github.

------
mykolasmith
> "Sometimes, we just want to share a bit of writing that is neither. Maybe we
> want to write for a specific audience, but don’t want to address the people
> who usually read our blogs."

You had me here. But I want to know where the top, featured, and new sections
are. Where can I be recommended gists that are similar to those of users I
subscribe to? Or are you trying to make this into the sort of imgur.com of
stories on HN kind of thing?

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Xcelerate
This is a little bit off the subject, but it relates to the topic title at
hand, so I thought I would ask it.

I noticed that the web address is gist.io. After searching 4 letter .io domain
names, I realized most of them are taken. However, I did stumble upon one
common word that has _not_ been taken, and in fact, it matches the same word
used in a little start-up project I've been working on (workout and fitness
tracking).

Now the question is this: I'm a grad student with relatively little money, and
$90 is a lot for a domain name. But if I actually finish my little project, is
the value of a 4-letter domain name that is a common word worth the $90?

.io names seem to be getting very popular lately, so I need to make my
decision quickly. Thanks for the help!

EDIT: And by the way, I also discovered that nap.io is available. I think HN
would have better use for the domain than a name-squatter, so if someone wants
to create a sleep app or something, there ya' go.

~~~
rane
Creating apps based on the availability of domain names, interesting approach,
hmm.

~~~
koblas
What would be a good service on nap.io? Nap Timer Nap Reminder Nap Prompter
Napsack...

~~~
Xcelerate
I see you purchased it :) There's a lot of things you could do with it. I
think a sleep logger of some sort would be good. People are always worrying
about how much sleep they get, and something to track and analyze one's sleep
would be great. Just an idea.

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alecperkins
I'm really liking this use of gists as a backend to more specialized services
(eg <http://dabblet.com> & <http://codepen.io> ). It's a nice, easy way to get
a versioned document store without having to build out the infrastructure.
Direct access to the "raw" form is a plus.

------
ams6110
Add a noscript tag reminding visitors they need to have javascript enabled.
Otherwise they just see a slowly pulsating "Loading..."

------
realize
I love this idea. Not sure if this is a direction you'd be interested in, but
it would be really cool if this could act as a widget that I could insert into
an existing blog site with a single line of code and your service would
populate the rest. This would let me use gists for all my blogging, and still
have the rest of my site around the outside.

~~~
realize
It would also let my own css style it.

------
seanconaty
Love this. I love writing markdown and I love the ease of creating gists. I've
actually used gists for writing too. (<http://gist.io/2483505>)

I've noticed that some authors will create a public repo like "thoughts" and
add markdown files to it (rather than writing gists).

~~~
roryokane
Yes, the recent HN submission <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4240407>
linked to an article [https://github.com/harryf/thoughts/blob/master/mobile-
killed...](https://github.com/harryf/thoughts/blob/master/mobile-killed-the-
login.md) that was in a “thoughts” GitHub repository.

~~~
seanconaty
Yup. That's what I was referring to!

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mgualt
What is a gist, really? Is it a versioned, modifiable and referencable
publication? Can I store it in my github repo? Should we be using gist as a
model for info packet? is there an "API"? If someone could explain their
understanding of a gist, I would appreciate it.

~~~
swanson
A gist is basically a mini-git repo. There is a revision history and they are
attached to your github page. You can also folk or edit them and there is a
permalink to each revision.

There is programmatic access to gists via the github API.

This might help clarify: An example of using gist.io: <http://gist.io/3135754>
The underlying gist: <https://gist.github.com/3135754>

~~~
mmahemoff
I was thinking it would be nice if there was also
<https://gist.github.com/3135754.json>

Then I checked. And there is.

Not to mention JSONP suppport.

<https://gist.github.com/3135754.json?callback=foo>

------
philh
I like this, but I find the default <code> style to be jarring when mixed with
the normal text style. Possibly making it smaller would be sufficient.

It also doesn't handle ```lang ... ``` blocks properly: compare
<https://gist.github.com/3050085> with <http://gist.io/3050085> .

------
sdqali
This is pretty cool. Mike Bostock, the creator of the d3.js visualization
framework runs a service <http://bl.ocks.org/> that lets you write HTML and JS
code for visualizations and use the website to display them. It is pretty
neat. An example can be found here: <http://bl.ocks.org/1134768>

------
minikomi
Had a very similar idea which would use a single gist as a repository for all
posts and do it clientside. Never fleshed it out though.

My thinking was to have a different gist per month which could be added too..

Unfortunately, not too friendly for non-js browsers which is kind of the weak
point.

<http://poyo.co/blog/>

------
amatsukawa
This looks awesome. It would be cool if you could build a community around
this. I wish I could not only post with this tool, but also read what others
are writing. While someone may not want to keep a full blog, they may be
willing to write a one-off post. This would be a great place to collect that
kind of posts.

------
x4ab
Instapaper compatibility: Considering the fact that this is for reading
writings rather than codes, I think it makes sense to make it compatible with
Instapaper and other services similar to it.

Also the <title> element should be the description rather than gist.io#.

------
hollerith
>"Maybe we want to write for a specific audience, but don’t want to address
the people who usually read our blogs."

I use Jottit Dot Com for that purpose.

In the 5 or so years I have been using it, I've never encountered a bug or a
service outage.

------
zende
feature request: syntax highlighting in code snippets

~~~
idan
Yeah, on my list

<https://github.com/idan/gistio/issues/1>

------
jamesflorentino
I think maruku would be a better alternative than markdown. Currently you
cannot make a table of contents inside your gist. But overall, I find this
extremely handy. Thanks for contributing this to the open source community.

------
jmduke
Related: is it possible to edit gists (anonymous or otherwise?) If not, that
seems like a functionality that could be implemented here, with a bit of
trickery.

~~~
idan
Not yet, see my comment above (or below, whatever)

~~~
seanconaty
I was referring to capabilities of github.

~~~
alecperkins
You can edit your own, and fork the gists of others. They're full git repos.

------
arrowgunz
I once made something similar, except that it's not dependent on GitHub.
<http://cpypst.me>

Great job by the way.

------
alx
Could you manage post backups using git in a local folder? I'm adding it to
your issues :)

edit: finally I wouldn't like to break your minimalistic idea down

~~~
idan
This isn't going to turn into something that interfaces with a repo. I wish
ifttt had a github channel, that would be perfect for this sort of thing.

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PufferBuffer
This is great. A lot of people already blog by ftp-ing text file or committing
to git, this greatly simplifies the process. Thank you!

------
danieldk
Cool! It would be nice if there is some information about the writer
available. For instance, their name as registered on Github.

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exolab
Please tell me that the end of your scale of permanence with regard to writing
isn't blogs :)

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nickbalestra
imho - No comparison to feathers, that looks like has been of inspiration as
well to gistio (even from our manifesto) :). Check it out and signup for the
private beta!

<http://feathe.rs/>

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fredsters_s
awesome. mad props

