perfidy

Welcome to this, the latest in a long line of futile updates to a long dead website. This is the sixth (or seventh) incarnation of a website that first came into existence in the dismal, ante-diluvian, pre-social-media world of 2003. 

Running counter to form, this incarnation of Perfidy shares the same platform as its predecessor. But seeing as we're most of a decade out from the last update¹1this post also details the history of perfidy and the origins of the current theme, we might just as well have switched. Moving from Drupal version 7 to the current version 11 required dealing with a staggering amount of very boring back-end changes, not one of which would interest the average, or even above-average reader. An uncharacteristic glitch in the all-knowing and capacious brain of Minister Patton lost some prfdy system files but God was - if not smiling, smirking - at us as I would have had to re-write them anyway. But all the required slogging was slogged, and you see before you a Perfidy reborn, future-proofed, and once more available to the five people and two dogs that are aware of it.

Some notable changes from the 2017 edition:

• All the meta text is now Montserrat, a font I've come to like. And the text you type in the comment fields or contact forms is Inconsolata, my favorite monospace font²2I am embarrassed to realize I have a favorite monospace font. I considered changing the main text font for a hat-trick of pointless font fussing, but left it at Merriweather.

• The search function is vastly improved, with better a better search tool that searches posts, comments, and pages. Further, it tells you which of these has your search term.

• Advanced AI technology was employed to create a brand new random thing field for displaying the perfidy taglines. It's no different in appearance or function than what once was there, but infinitely easier to manage on the backend.

• Advanced AI technology was further employed to create the capability to use Tufte-style sidenotes³3like this one right here. - a feature I have always wanted but was entirely too lazy to create.

• Advanced AI technology was recklessly deployed to create a tool that hides the format tips below the comment box, and replaces it with... WHATEVER I WANT. Straining at gnats, to be sure, but I wanted it and AI is nothing if not obsequiously eager to please.

• Many subtle changes to layout that no one will ever notice.

• Removed the social media sharing links because 1) I no longer approve of social media even to the small extent I once did, and 2) I really don't anticipate anyone being moved by the spirit to socially share anything posted here.

• Added some new categories which, aspirationally, I hope to make use of in the near future. These categories have been illustrated with brand new, fresh from the factory category icons.

Much else is the same as it was, or better. All content back to our inception is available, with categories checked and gross malfunctions of text redacted. I even found replacements for some missing images⁴4some, not all - and there are a lot of broken links after nearly a quarter century of bitrot. There is a new tools page (also linked in the footer) which will detail the specifics of what tools are used to create, maintain, and host the site. Eventually, there will be links to novels and role playing games I've created or am in the process of creating, and I may even be tempted to recreate the perfidy merch store, if only so that I can get a cool fire-logo shirt for myself again.

What is a sidenote¹1Simplest answer, it's one of these.? The most thorough discussion of sidenotes and their use on the web can be found at gwern.net, and here's a pithy abstract:

Sidenotes & margin notes are a typographic convention which improves on footnotes & endnotes by instead putting the notes in the page margin to let the reader instantly read them without needing to refer back and forth to the end of the document (endnotes) or successive pages (footnotes spilling over).

They are particularly useful for web pages, where ‘footnotes’ are de facto endnotes, and clicking back and forth to endnotes is a pain for readers. (Footnote variants, like “floating footnotes” which pop up on mouse hover, reduce the reader’s effort but don’t eliminate it.)

However, they are not commonly used, perhaps because web browsers until relatively recently made it hard to implement sidenotes easily & reliably. Tufte-CSS has popularized the idea and since then, there has been a proliferation of slightly variant approaches. I review some of the available implementations.

That about sums it up, but you can read on at the link for further discussion of the utility and reliability of various approaches, both in print and online. In fact I recommend that you do, it's very well written and informative.

But why am I talking about them? Well, the Ministry of Minor Perfidy's Bureau of Retributive Software Development has caused to be created a Drupal implementation of sidenotes. You can find the project here, and install it on your own site²2provided your site is powered by Drupal, of course, thanks to the wonders of the open source and internet generally. This module is, as you'd expect of a Drupal module, completely free to use.

This is something that I've wanted to have for years and years. This sort of functionality really fits both the style of writing³3when that writing actually happens, admittedly a serious issue here. and website design that we have at perfidy. But constraints - time, skill, and laziness being primary - kept my own personal sidenotes project uncomfortably in the future. The advent of AI⁴4so called, or at least large language models with some facility at coding, broke through those constraints and I was able to 'develop' a working sidenotes module in an afternoon.

Perfidy's sidenotes has a number of cool features⁵5at least, I think they're cool, your mileage may vary.: 

• Sidenotes can be typed right were you want the note to be placed, wrapped in double parentheses. A text filter converts them into the notes you see here.

• Notes can display to either the right or left of the body text⁶6This applies to all notes on the site, it can't be changed on a per-note basis. Though now that I think on it, maybe that's a feature I could add.

• Notes stack - if you have a lot of notes in a paragraph, they won't overlap⁷7Nor will they overlap with notes in subsequent paragraphs..

• Responsive notes: on small displays like phones, notes collapse from the side to immediately after the paragraph they're in.

• Styling hooks are available for easy theming.

• Minimal js to handle endnotes on mobile, and reflow when the window is resized.

• Label styles include numbers⁸81, 2, 3, etc., symbols^††*, †, ††, §, ¶, ‖, Δ, ◊, ☞, no label^✶like this one, and custom^✶[wik] like perfidy's trademark endnotes from the old days.

• Note labels can be overridden on a per note basis, and don't increment numbering of the other notes⁹9like we did in the notes in the previous paragraph..

• And I just now discovered¹⁰10Though it makes sense that it would, as long as the text filter is applied. that you can also use sidenotes in comments.

You can even drop images and tables in an endnote, and any normal text formatting. You'd likely want to be careful on the sizes of these things, but a nifty bonus feature. Sidenotes is compatible with the CKEditor wysiwyg that you most commonly find on Drupal sites.

So there it is, The Ministry of Minor Perfidy's custom Drupal sidenotes implementation. Enjoy!