about-corwin

The source of aboutcorwin.com: a page about Corwin Brust and the places he puts his time (GNU Emacs for Windows, EmacsConf, Org Babel's Perl support, Dungeon) that opens into a portfolio of inputloop, the free software shop he keeps with Bryant Frankford.

It is one page of HTML and CSS that reads well with scripts turned off. The scripts, all free and labelled for GNU LibreJS, add moving windows on each card, a parallax portfolio, cards that grow into index cards, an Emacs-style mode-line, and a prompt that searches the cards by meaning with no server behind it. Tone pads, a page pad at the top and one per section, move the introductions between warm and formal and between grade 4 and college reading (DESIGN.md, "The tone d-pad"). A second page, cast/index.html (the second act), holds the dramatis personae: people and the agents' personas in two columns that slide past each other.

• content/: the words. sections/ holds the introductions' tone versions. One plain text file per card (about/ for the two cards about Corwin, then involvements/, projects/, concepts/; personae/ for the people and personas), plus site.txt (About and footer words, and the cast page's top line), vocabulary.txt, links.txt (the links area beside Customize) and ABOUT-EDITS.md (Corwin's hand edits to the About, as rules every rewrite must keep; read it before rewriting the About).
• src/: the page template, the stylesheet, the scripts, the logos, .htaccess.
• build.py: turns the two into public/. Python 3.8 or later, standard library only.
• deploy/, scripts/make-dist, scripts/access-card: the shared-hosting deploy (stage, go-live, rollback) and the access card that says in words what a host lets you do; see deploy/ACCESS-CARD.md.
• tests/: Python, JavaScript and browser checks, and tests/run.sh --prove-red, which breaks a copy on purpose to show that each check can fail.
• DESIGN.md says why it is made this way; ACCESSIBILITY.md says what it can and cannot do for people using assistive technology; BUILDING.md covers every place it builds (Linux, macOS, Windows, Guix, a container, GitHub, Gitea, Forgejo, gitcha) and how to put it on Dreamhost.

Quick start

python3 build.py                         # writes public/
python3 -m http.server -d public 8000    # then open http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Or open public/index.html straight from disk: everything works from file:// too.

To run every check: make check (needs node 18+ and npm install for the browser checks; make check-fast skips the browser). Windows without make: .\build.ps1 check.

Change the words

Edit a file in content/, then build. A card file looks like this:

title: Dungeon
role: I co-founded Dungeon, an engine for tabletop-style dungeon crawls that runs inside GNU Emacs.
order: 4                 # position in its section
window: fog              # which picture plays in the window (content/windows/)
logo: dungeon            # optional: src/logos/dungeon.svg shows when you hover the window
do: play                 # the shop page's four words: do, bring, whose, state
bring: an-emacs
whose: community
state: upstream
tags: emacs, game, tabletop
link: Label | https://...
stat: Label | value      # the back of the card
score: Label | 3 | 2026-10   # the scoreboard: a count and the date it was counted

== summary ==
What it is.
== function ==
What it does.
== practice ==
How we practise it.
== presentation ==
How its window shows it.

Every tag must be in content/vocabulary.txt; the build stops on one that is not, and says which. The build also reads the prose for vocabulary words, so a card is found by what it says, not only by its tags. Keep prose under 500 words per card. Link only repositories that are public.

Open items for Corwin

Refreshed 2026-11-01.

• Go live. The site is built, packed and staged on the host but not live (deploy/STATUS-2026-11-01.md). After you have checked the three claims below, run on the host: sh ~/aboutcorwin.com-releases/go-live 20261101-040301. It copies the web root aside first; if the About text changes, make dist and send the two files in dist/ again (BUILDING.md).

• A line in your own words in the About section, if you want one, and your GPG fingerprint in content/site.txt, which this page does not guess. The Find me list points to the Windows section of the Emacs download page, where it is listed.

• The About text was rewritten on 2026-11-01 from CORWIN.md (what it shows, not its praise), the earlier page, and the shop's public list. Check three claims only you can settle: "one of the Savannah Hackers, the volunteers who keep GNU's project hosting running"; "I help organize EmacsConf" (CORWIN.md says core organizer; the card keeps "one of the volunteers"); and that you publish card-games on MELPA (linked as melpa.org/#/card-games, which responds, but the page does not say who maintains it).

• corwin.cloud: the card describes it only as the brief did (a diagram of how the machines connect, a directory, curated packages) and links the repository. The GitHub API reported the repository empty on 2026-11-01, so correct the card once there is more to say, and say if the site itself has an address to link. Its state is "careful" (not yet reviewed outside the shop).

• The family and fandom paragraph in content/site.txt now follows your hand edits of 2026-11-02, kept as rules in content/ABOUT-EDITS.md so a rewrite cannot drop them. Jean's link is now her page in the University of Minnesota's Minnesota Election Archive (her own record, not Bill's book); Defending Principles, the book of Bill's writing she edited and introduced, is the other public page about her if you prefer it. Minicon links to mnstf.org/minicon/, because minicon.org's https certificate does not verify (it redirects there over plain http).

• fourSwordsFromThePast's credit is "not yet written in its README", as the shop page has it.

• The other cards' numbers are dated 2026-10-29; only the public-repository count (14) was recounted on 2026-11-01. Recount the rest when you next look.

Licence

Words, content and logos: CC-BY-SA-4.0. Code (build.py, src/js/, src/css/, tests, scripts): GPL-3.0-or-later. Full texts in LICENSES/. src/js/chamber.model.js comes from C4; see PROVENANCE.md.

Copyright 2026 Corwin Brust and Contributors. Drafted with Mentat, Claude models working for inputloop.