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https://github.com/stewdio/jem

Jem is truly outrageous.
https://github.com/stewdio/jem

Last synced: 16 days ago
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Jem is truly outrageous.

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```

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                         ♫  JEM IS TRULY OUTRAGEOUS  ♫                        



------------------------------------------------------------------------------

```



Jem  

==============================================================================



**What’s all this, then?**

It’s but a sketch! A work in progress! And perhaps someday I’ll even get 

around to completing the example bits—but there’s enough here already to 

demonstrate where my mind’s at, eh?



**Who’s the audience for this? No, I mean really—who?**

Jem is for JavaScript enthusiasts who enjoy lightweight solutions for building

small websites like art portfolios, personal blogs, and so on. Jem pushes 

all of the other common web languages out of the way—like HTML, CSS, database 

query languages and so on—in favor of good old JavaScript. Isn’t that nice?



**How can I try it out?**

Just drag and drop the index.html file into your browser window. Jem is built

to run the same off a desktop as it does off a server. This makes testing and 

sketching out changes to your site very convenient. No server software to 

install and confgure on your local machine. No pre-processors like Sass or 

CoffeeScript to fiddle with. 



**But where’s the database?**

Your data is sorted right in the JavaScript code itself. If you were running a

social network with a billion users that would be ridiculous. But if it’s a 

portfolio site with a few dozen projects, a few hundred blog posts, and so on, 

then it’s actually a fresh way to look at the problem. JavaScript Objects are 

happy to store data of any type and Arrays of Objects can be easily sorted and

filtered—just like querying a regular database. 



**This doesn’t sound very scalable**

It’s not! And it’s not pretending to be either. That’s its charm.



**What if my site outgrows Jem? Is my data locked in?**

Jem can export your data to CSV and MySQL so it’s easy to take your data with 

you. Plus, because all of that export code is right there in plain JavaScript 

you can customize it if needed. 



**How are Jem’s files organized?**

Most frameworks separate server-side executables from static assets from 

client-sides scripts from stylesheets, etc. Jem instead groups files according

to context. Blog-related files go in the blog folder—period. This makes it 

easy to swap a new portfolio project in (or out) for example.



**What about access priviledges? What if I’ve got an intern updating my blog 

but I don’t want to give her access to the whole site?**

Just give her FTP access to the /blog/ folder. Everything’s encapsulated, 

right? So she’ll only have access to what she needs and nothing more!



**What about password protection? Let’s say you have a directory you only wish

a specific client to have access to?**

Just encrypt the objects! Use their email address and password as the key to 

discourage them from sharing it around. 



**If there’s no server-side component how do I track usage?**

Just use a free analytics service—like most sane people do. Jem can play nice

with Google Analytics; right now that requires some doin’ on your end, but 

more emphatic support for this is coming. 



**Are you concerned that search engines might not be able to index your site’s

content on account that it’s entirely dynamically generated?**

Nope.



**Couldn’t you at least use JSON data instead of raw JavaScript for storing

data? That way you could—**

Nope. It needed to be executable. Besides, JSON is just half-neutered 

JavaScript anyway.



File organization

------------------------------------------------------------------------------



TBD. Still working out the manifesto and implementation for this...



Road map

------------------------------------------------------------------------------



**Downwind search**. Right now the blog example is super boring because it 

can’t traverse the folder structure and pull out data from different blog

posts. That’s a serious problem! Don’t worry, it’s the first thing on the 

list—Jem would be pretty silly without it.



**Pjax-style navigation**. Jem is ripe for lazy loading and the elemination of

full page requests. But we’re just not there yet. (No time yet!)



**Clearer support for Google Analytics**. It’s already possible to use Google

Analytics or similar tracking software, but it would be nice to make it 

clearer how to configure that for Pjax-style navigation.



**Scheme**. Jem wrangles HTML and CSS via JavaScript. And we’re already 

massaging those naming conventions. This puts us just a step away from 

crafting an entirely different language. Lisp is beautiful. JavaScript is 

already based on Scheme. Why not add a Scheme interpreter so you can then 

write your whole Jem-based website just using Scheme?!



Code typography

------------------------------------------------------------------------------



__Semicolons__  

First, I only use semicolons when absolutely necessary. By definition any

valid JavaScript interpreter _must_ perform automatic semicolon insertion. 

This means you just don’t need them. Let me repeat: YOU JUST DON’T NEED THEM.

Leaving them out makes your code typographically cleaner; reduces visual 

clutter and noise in the signal. It’s good for your soul.



__Whitespace__  

I use tabs, not spaces for codeblock indentation—functions, object blocks, and

so on. Tab is the only true unit of indentation. My tabs are the width of four

spaces. Two is too small. Eight is just too damn wide. Within lines of code 

I’ll often add bits of whitespace to line up consecutive equal signs or other

recurring symbols if it’s subtle and not too wonky:

```  

right = 2  

left  = 3  

```  



I’ll often add a space between an open-parenthesis and a token; same for 

between a token and close-parenthesis. Line breaks after an open bracket are

also desirable. 



__Comments__  

Two line breaks before line comments. One line break after them. Two spaces 

following a comment’s slashes. (One for hanging quotation marks in order to

optically align the text itself.) For critical to-do’s I add two juxtaposed

ampersats to both visually separate them and make them easy to search for. 

Just a quirk of mine. Occasionally if the situation calls for it I’ll use 

special “rhombus” commnents for big visual breaks. They have three horizontal 

spaces between slashes and text and vertical padding inside like so:  

```  

    /////////////////  

   //             //  

  //   Rhombus   //  

 //             //  

/////////////////  

```  

I pad these rhombus comments with four line breaks above and two below.