A static site generator written in Jai.

Tabula operates on a subset of the commonmark markdown specification. I have not implemented the full specification, rather the features which I tend to use in my blog posts. Until I have reason to implement more, or receive OSS contributions, these are:

• ATX Headings.
• Singular inline emphasis (bold, italic, bolditalic).
• Regular text & newlines.
• Single-line quotes.
• Multi-line quotes.
• Inline code.
• Code blocks.
• Hyperlinks.
• Images.
• Ordered Lists.
• Unordered Lists.
• Sidenotes.

First, download tabula.exe or build from source by cloning the repository and running jai build.jai.

In the same directory as tabula.exe, create a folder called posts. In this folder, you can put any .md files you want to turn into blog posts.

In the posts folder, you can also make an images subfolder, to store local images you reference in those posts.

If you then run tabula.exe, a web folder will be created. This should host all of the necessary files for you to host your static site. You can test this out by entering the web folder and running this python command: python3 -m http.server.

Visiting localhost:port from your website will then present the website.

Important note: all .md files you wish to parse must begin with a custom front matter.

The front matter must contain 3 pieces of metadata. These are title, subtitle, and date (YYYY-MM-DD). Title and date are required fields.

I've left an example in the provided test.md file, but for completeness:

---
title: My blog post
subtitle: A blog post about blog posts
date: 2025-06-03
---

Or you could do:

---
title: My blog post
date: 2025-06-03
---

There are a number of command line arguments you can supply:

Usage: tabula [options]

Options:
  --title <text>        Site title displayed in the header
  --stylesheet <path>   Path to a custom CSS file
  --about <path>        Path to a markdown file to use as the about page. This page does not need frontmatter.
  --no-about            Disable the about page entirely
  --help                Show this message

To contribute to this project, you'll need to have access to the Jai compiler.

The process is simple; if you find a bug, raise an issue on GitHub or git.deplet.ing. If you submit a PR, I'll try to check it out promptly.

Unresearch.ing