etamil.in
The website for the eTamil programming language.
Jekyll, deployed to GitHub Pages from main by
.github/workflows/jekyll-gh-pages.yml.
The custom domain is set in CNAME.
The site's largest page is the
user manual (manual.md, and ta/manual.md in
Tamil) — the complete guide from installation to a database-backed HTTP service.
It is linked from the compiler README and from the VS Code extension, so it needs
to keep working at that URL.
Layout
_config.yml site settings, brand vars, SEO defaults
_data/ui.yml nav/footer/button strings, keyed by language
_layouts/ default (chrome) -> page (prose) / home (landing)
_includes/ head, nav, footer, jsonld
assets/css/main.css the whole stylesheet — no framework, no build step
assets/img/ icon, favicon, social card
index.html landing page
language.md syntax tour and the ezuqqu romanization
keywords.md generated keyword reference
finance.md accounting and taxation framework
backend.md HTTP server, databases, auth
install.md build from source
status.md what works, what is planned
research.md the paper, plus an index of the research notes
about.md author, licence
404.html robots.txt site.webmanifest
ta/ the Tamil site — same pages, same permalinks under /ta/
docs/ research notes (GST, Ind AS, IFRS, Tamil script)
article/lit-review.md systematic literature review
Running it locally
bundle exec jekyll serve
If you have no Ruby toolchain, the pages are plain Markdown and the stylesheet is
plain CSS — both are readable as-is.
Editing
Content lives in the Markdown files at the repository root. Each carries front
matter with a title, a permalink and a description; the description is what
search engines show, so it is worth writing deliberately.
Design is entirely in assets/css/main.css. Colours come from the mark: deep
navy #0A2A4E for chrome, azure #2E90FA for accents. Light is the default and
dark follows prefers-color-scheme; both are defined with the same custom
properties at the top of the file.
The keyword page is generated. keywords.md is derived from
docs/reference/KEYWORDS.md in the compiler repository, which is itself generated
from src/lexer.rs. Regenerate it there first, then copy the tables across —
do not hand-edit the rows.
Brand assets
assets/img/ holds the mark in the sizes the site and the social card need. The
SVG is the source of truth for shape; the PNG, WebP and ICO are rendered from the
same geometry.
To swap in a different original, replace the file and keep the name:
| File | Used for |
|---|
etamil.webp | the icon, exactly as supplied (340×340) |
etamil-icon-72.png | header and footer mark, corners alpha-clipped |
etamil-icon-192.png, etamil-icon-512.png | web app manifest |
apple-touch-icon.png | iOS home screen |
favicon.ico | browser tab (16/32/48) |
etamil-logo.jpg / .webp / .png | the full lockup, artwork untouched (1200×340) |
og-image.png | link previews on social and chat (1200×630) |
esan-maruff.jpg / .webp / -336.webp | author portrait |
The originals live in Pictures/Personal/ — eTamil.webp, eTamil_full.jpg and
Esan-Maruff-600px.jpg. scratchpad/real_assets.py regenerates the whole set from
them; it only converts format and resamples, and never redraws. The icon mask uses
a 2.4% corner radius because the supplied plate is near-square — a larger radius
clips the artwork.
The palette is sampled from the logo, not chosen: navy #002140 and cyan
#00AFF0 are its two colours. --link is a darkened cyan (#00688F) because the
brand cyan is only 2.5:1 on white.
The About page portrait comes from author.photo in _config.yml.
Two languages
English lives at /, Tamil at /ta/. Separate URLs rather than a client-side
swap, so each language is independently indexable and can carry its own title and
description. jekyll-polyglot is not on the GitHub Pages plugin whitelist, so this
is hand-rolled — but it is only three moving parts.
Front matter pairs the pages. Every translated page carries three keys:
lang: ta # en or ta
key: finance # same on both halves of a pair; drives nav highlighting
alt_url: /finance/ # the other language's URL
alt_url is the switch that turns i18n on for a page. With it, the page gets
reciprocal hreflang, a visible language switcher, and the preference script.
Without it — as on every page under docs/ — the page is English-only and claims
no translation, which is the honest signal to a crawler.
Chrome strings come from _data/ui.yml, looked up as site.data.ui[lang]. No
template branches on language; add a string to both blocks and it appears in both.
Preference detection is a small inline script in head.html, emitted only when
alt_url exists. The order of precedence is ?lang= → a stored choice →
navigator.languages. A Tamil-preferring browser landing on an English page is
sent to the Tamil one; anything else stays. It never overrides a choice the reader
made, and a URL typed directly is always respected — reaching /ta/ with an
English browser keeps you on Tamil. Crawlers rely on hreflang, not this script.
Adding a page
- Write the English page with
lang: en, key: <name>, alt_url: /ta/<name>/.
- Write
ta/<name>.md with lang: ta, the same key, alt_url: /<name>/.
- If it belongs in the nav, add the label to both blocks of
_data/ui.yml and a
row to _includes/nav.html.
Translating one of the docs/ notes means adding ta/docs/<name>.md and then
setting alt_url on both — until then, leave alt_url off so the site does not
advertise a translation that is not there.
Tamil typography
Tamil stacks vowel signs above and below the base letter, so it needs more leading
than Latin at the same size. html.ta raises the body line-height to 1.9, loosens
headings, and narrows the prose measure to 68ch, since Tamil runs wider per
character. Those rules are at the bottom of main.css.
SEO
jekyll-seo-tag emits titles, canonical URLs, Open Graph and Twitter cards from
the front matter. jekyll-sitemap writes /sitemap.xml, which robots.txt
advertises. _includes/jsonld.html adds structured data the plugin cannot infer:
WebSite, Person, SoftwareSourceCode and the ScholarlyArticle for the paper.
Every page needs a title and a description. Pages without front matter are not
processed by Jekyll at all — they get served as raw Markdown — so never add a
.md file without it.
Licence
Content and code: AGPL-3.0-or-later, matching the compiler.
Previewing locally without Ruby
GitHub Pages builds the published site. Jekyll needs Ruby, and on a machine
without it you cannot render a single page — which makes it impossible to check
the nav, a Liquid change, or the embedded editor before pushing.
tools/preview.py renders the site with a real Liquid implementation and serves
it, no Ruby involved:
py -m pip install -r tools/requirements.txt
py tools/preview.py
Then open http://localhost:4000/. --build-only writes _site_preview/ and
exits; --port N changes the port.
It covers front matter, _config.yml defaults, _data, nested layouts,
{% include %} with parameters, relative_url, Jekyll's own filters, and
Markdown. It does not cover Rouge highlighting (fenced blocks render plain),
kramdown attribute lists, collections, or the sitemap and SEO plugins — {% seo %}
is replaced with a plain title and description. If a page looks right here and
wrong on Pages, suspect one of those.
It also serves .wasm as application/wasm, which the editor needs and
python -m http.server gets wrong.
The editor
The eTamil compiler front end and VM are compiled to WebAssembly and run in the
browser: see ide/README.md. The editor is embedded on the language tour via
_includes/editor.html, and has a full-page version at /ide/.
{% capture seed %}அச்சு("வணக்கம்");{% endcapture %}
{% include editor.html seed=seed name="வணக்கம்.qmz" size="compact" %}
Rebuild it with cd ide && npm run tokens && npm run wasm && npm run build, and
commit assets/ide/.
