trying forester

Forester has been on my radar for a little while now, and I really like it! Tim Hosgood recently (i.e., three months ago, because I am slow) alerted me to his usage of Forester for his FGA translation, and it blew me away by its elegance and ease of use.

This has kind of been the "missing piece" for the EGA translation project, something I got very burned out over during my struggles with trying to make Gerby work with it. Gerby's what the Stack Project uses, and I actually managed to make it work for a time. However, dealing with a crumbling python stack and WAY too much friction simply to serve some static HTML files really sucked the enjoyment out of it, and so the project fell into disrepair.

Regardless, I've been interested in the idea of maintaining a "digital garden" of sorts, but never found the right software for it. I prefer using markdown for notes, but anyone who's tried to do something structured using markdown knows it's pretty hard. However, I still like using markdown for unstructured writing (such as this post). The idea of learning yet another syntax isn't ideal, yet it's necessary for a tool that aims to do what Forester does. I think with enough practice, I could be fluent in Forester like I am in LaTeX or markdown[^1]. I don't think it would be the replacement for my free-form writings (I can't see myself using p{} for every paragraph).

Anyways, I'll keep experimenting with Forester and see where it goes! I'm using it to work through some exercises in a textbook; it's not the perfect test, since it's a linear format, but it can act as a litmus test for using the language. Along the way, maybe I'll start gardening a bit! :)

[^1] If I can stop accidentally typing ${} instead of #{}...