papersite

A Hakyll-based proceedings site generating tool.

Installation

There are two main programs that are used to manage the JMLR W&CP web site:

• site: The HTML generation tool (based on Hakyll).
• import: The recevied BibTeX to database import tool.

These are both built by running

$ cabal configure
$ cabal build

The configure step will check whether dependencies are present and, if necessary, download them.

The executables, once built, are at dist/build/site/site and dist/build/import/import. For convenience, I recommend setting up links to these, for example:

$ ln -s dist/build/site/site ./site
$ ln -s dist/build/import/import ./import

Usage

Using these tools occurs in two steps:

1. Importing the BibTeX file and PDFs received from a conference organiser into a simple, file-based database.

2. Generating the HTML from the files imported into the database.

The beauty of the file-based database is that, once the information for a conference is imported, the information for individual papers can be edited and managed under version control. After each change, the HTML for the site can be (incrementally) updated and deployed.

Importing

To import a BibTeX file received from a conference organiser (say conf13.bib) into the directory db:

$ ./import conf13.bib db

This will create a file-system-based database in the directory in db. If NN is the value of the volume field in the @proceedings entry in the BibTeX file, it will consists of:

• A BibTeX file vNN.bib with the conference metadata.
• A directory vNN with files of the form ID.bib, ID.pdf, and ID-supp.*. Each of these files correspond to the keys in the @InProceedings entries in conf13.bib.

Generating the site

To generate the sites for all the proceedings in the db directory, run:

$ ./site rebuild

This will create a static site in /tmp/jmlr. This site can be viewed by running:

$ ./site preview

and then pointing a browser at http://localhost:8000/.

If changes are made to entries, just run ./site build to update without rebuilding the entire site.

Selectively generating volumes

When tweaking single papers in the database or testing the generation code, it is inconvenient to have to rebuild every volume. To alleviate this it is possible to specify which volumes you want previewed or rebuilt via the only modifier. For example:

$ ./site rebuild only v1      # Volume 1 only
$ ./site rebuild only v[2-7]  # Volumes 2 through 7 inclusive only
$ ./site rebuild only v3 v23  # Volumes 3 and 23 only

The only extension also works for build and preview. Note that the v[2-7] is using a regular expression to match the digits 2 through 7. The term v[10-13] will not match volumes 10 through 13. This is more easily achieved by explicit writing v10 v11 v12 v13.

Deploying the site

Once you are happy with how the site looks, it can be pushed to the JMLR.org by running:

$ ./site deploy

That's it!

You may need to update the credentials to those you use to log into the CSAIL web server. To do this, find the definition of config in site.hs and edit the string containing mreid@login.csail.mit.edu to your username.

Once you've made this edit, run cabal build to rebuild the site tool.

Proceedings BibTeX File Format

The entire site for a conference is generated from a single BibTeX file. Because the site generation is automated, it is important that the BibTeX file conform exactly to the following:

1. Each paper in the proceedings must appear in the file as an @InProceedings entry. Each entry must have the following fields:

   • title: The title of the paper.
   • abstract: The paper's abstract (in valid LaTeX).
   • author: The paper's authors in Lastname, Firstnames format, separated by and.
   • pages: The page numbers for the paper in startpage - endpage format.

2. A @Conference entry must appear in the file with the conference details. The following fields must be present:

   • editor: The editors' names (in same format as authors above).
   • title: The title of the conference.
   • year: The year of the conference.
   • volume: The assigned JMLR W&CP volume number.

   The following fields are optional:

   • booktitle: e.g., Proceedings of the Nth Conference on Stuff.
   • month: The month of the conference.

Note: All field values in the BibTeX file must be valid BibTeX. For example:

• Names with accents (e.g., François) must be written in LaTeX (e.g., Fran\c{c}ois).
• Any mathematics in the title or abstract must be surrounded by matching $.
• LaTeX ``quotation marks'' must be used.