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This repository is for the website containing Sumana Harihareswara's MC Masala newspaper columns -- a static text site with a simple search engine.

The site is at harihareswara.net/mcmasala/. This repository contains the back-end scripts I wrote for munging the text, the CSS for styling the site, and the code and hooks for the search.

Requires:

1. Python 3
2. Beautiful Soup 4 and Pystache
3. Nodejs
4. Lunr.js and jQuery - I used this plugin plus lunr.min.js

Run:

1. python3 json_output.py to create the data file for Lunr to search
2. edit the JSON file slightly to turn the list into the value for a dictionary whose value is "pages"
3. nodejs build_index.js to create Lunr.js's index file
4. python3 spitouthtml.py to create the index.html and individual story files

Between April 2005 and August 2007, I wrote a weekly column called "MC Masala" for the "Inside Bay Area" section of several papers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Oakland Tribune. My work circulated to about a million people, I'm told. In 2011 I made an abortive attempt to get the columns online but wasn't a strong programmer and thus gave up on all the fiddly bits. Then, while at the Recurse Center, I figured this would be a fun and useful way to learn Beautiful Soup and learn to finagle a search engine. I wrote up a more detailed making-of.

• improve de-duplication (checking dates and headlines)
• fix Unicode-type character issues
• figure out why only including search.min.js and not lunr.min.js causes registration problems
• treat pullquotes and "write to her at" lines better
• use Pystache more thoroughly instead of string concatenation & other hacks