Inkpress - The Quick Templater CLI tool 🦑

Inkpress is a node-based CLI tool allowing you to quickly generate files of a repetitive structure and answers.

Use cases include (but are not limited to):

• Marking for educators
• Invitations
• Personalised emails to large groups
• Testing data
• Writing standard readmes

Installation

You can install this a node module from npm. Run the following command:

npm install -g inkpress

Running

To initialise the workspace and the default templates and options, run the following command:

inkpress init

This will create a directories and files:

• workspace/: Where everything related to inkpress is created
• workspace/output: Where all your generated content goes
• options.yml: Yaml file containing all your tags and selection. Comes with same selections and tags
• template.txt: The Template file which you will be filling as you write.

If these files already exists, run the following command

inkpress

Template Creations

Templates are basic text files with tags denoted by the {{ tag }} in the text file. Each tags must match a selection of option key in the options file. Otherwise an error is thrown. The template is written in /workspace/template.txt

Below are table of a tags and special tags denoted by an underscore _tag that each have unique properties

| Tags | Descriptions | | -------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | {{ tag }} | Simple tag, will match to the same key as seen in the options.yml | | {{ \_time }} | Returns the current time | | {{ \_manual }} | Forces a manual input |

Tags can also be given options flags along with certain values depending on the input. Some flags will not have any affect on certain special tags.

| Options | Descriptions | | ---------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | {{ tag -r }} | Randomly select from the options provided by the tag | | {{ tag -l <count> <delim> }} | Allow you to loop the same options by a specific count and deliminated by a specifc deliminator (limited to one character or newline character). For infinite looping, use a negative number for the count. Select DONE to terminate the looping |

Options Writing

Options are the selection which is tag is associated with.

For example:

# options.yml file
greeting:
  - "Yo!"
  - "Hello, "
  - "Howdy"

affect:
  - "tired?"
  - "thirsty?"
  - "sick of the establishment?"

# template.txt file

{{ greeting }}, lemme guess you are {{ affect }}

You can add new option tags as well as selections for each tag.