a distill-style blog post

an example of a distill-style blog post and main elements

Equations

This theme supports rendering beautiful math in inline and display modes using MathJax 3 engine. You just need to surround your math expression with $$, like $$ E = mc^2 $$. If you leave it inside a paragraph, it will produce an inline expression, just like $E = mc^2$.

To use display mode, again surround your expression with $$ and place it as a separate paragraph. Here is an example:

\[\left( \sum_{k=1}^n a_k b_k \right)^2 \leq \left( \sum_{k=1}^n a_k^2 \right) \left( \sum_{k=1}^n b_k^2 \right)\]

Note that MathJax 3 is a major re-write of MathJax that brought a significant improvement to the loading and rendering speed, which is now on par with KaTeX.

Citations

Citations are then used in the article body with the <d-cite> tag. The key attribute is a reference to the id provided in the bibliography. The key attribute can take multiple ids, separated by commas.

The citation is presented inline like this: (a number that displays more information on hover). If you have an appendix, a bibliography is automatically created and populated in it.

Distill chose a numerical inline citation style to improve readability of citation dense articles and because many of the benefits of longer citations are obviated by displaying more information on hover. However, we consider it good style to mention author last names if you discuss something at length and it fits into the flow well — the authors are human and it’s nice for them to have the community associate them with their work.

Footnotes

Just wrap the text you would like to show up in a footnote in a <d-footnote> tag. The number of the footnote will be automatically generated.This will become a hoverable footnote.

Code Blocks

This theme implements a built-in Jekyll feature, the use of Rouge, for syntax highlighting. It supports more than 100 languages. This example is in C++. All you have to do is wrap your code in a liquid tag:

{% highlight c++ linenos %}
code code code
{% endhighlight %}

The keyword linenos triggers display of line numbers. You can try toggling it on or off yourself below:

int main(int argc, char const \*argv[])
{
string myString;

    cout << "input a string: ";
    getline(cin, myString);
    int length = myString.length();

    char charArray = new char * [length];

    charArray = myString;
    for(int i = 0; i < length; ++i){
        cout << charArray[i] << " ";
    }

    return 0;
}

Diagrams

This theme supports generating various diagrams from a text description using jekyll-diagrams plugin. Below, we generate a few examples of such diagrams using languages such as mermaid, plantuml, vega-lite, etc.

Note: different diagram-generation packages require external dependencies to be installed on your machine. Also, be mindful of that because of diagram generation the fist time you build your Jekyll website after adding new diagrams will be SLOW. For any other details, please refer to jekyll-diagrams README.

Note: This is not supported for local rendering!

The diagram below was generated by the following code:

{% mermaid %}
sequenceDiagram
    participant John
    participant Alice
    Alice->>John: Hello John, how are you?
    John-->>Alice: Great!
{% endmermaid %}

Tweets

An example of displaying a tweet:

jekyll-twitter-plugin (1.0.0): A Liquid tag plugin for Jekyll that renders Tweets from Twitter API http://t.co/m4EIQPM9h4
— RubyGems (@rubygems) October 5, 2014

An example of pulling from a timeline:

Tweets by jekyllrb

For more details on using the plugin visit: jekyll-twitter-plugin

Blockquotes

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. —Anais Nin

Images

Markdown (note the inclusion of {{ site.url }}):

Some more complex ways to load images, if the standard MarkDown way doesn’t suit you.

A simple, elegant caption looks good between image rows, after each row, or doesn't have to be there at all.

Layouts

The main text column is referred to as the body. It is the assumed layout of any direct descendants of the d-article element.

.l-body

For images you want to display a little larger, try .l-page:

.l-page

All of these have an outset variant if you want to poke out from the body text a little bit. For instance:

.l-body-outset

.l-page-outset

Occasionally you’ll want to use the full browser width. For this, use .l-screen. You can also inset the element a little from the edge of the browser by using the inset variant.

.l-screen

.l-screen-inset

The final layout is for marginalia, asides, and footnotes. It does not interrupt the normal flow of .l-body sized text except on mobile screen sizes.

.l-gutter

Other Typography?

Emphasis, aka italics, with asterisks (*asterisks*) or underscores (_underscores_).

Strong emphasis, aka bold, with asterisks or underscores.

Combined emphasis with asterisks and underscores.

Strikethrough uses two tildes. ~~Scratch this.~~

First ordered list item
Another item ⋅⋅* Unordered sub-list.
Actual numbers don’t matter, just that it’s a number ⋅⋅1. Ordered sub-list
And another item.

⋅⋅⋅You can have properly indented paragraphs within list items. Notice the blank line above, and the leading spaces (at least one, but we’ll use three here to also align the raw Markdown).

⋅⋅⋅To have a line break without a paragraph, you will need to use two trailing spaces.⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅Note that this line is separate, but within the same paragraph.⋅⋅ ⋅⋅⋅(This is contrary to the typical GFM line break behaviour, where trailing spaces are not required.)

Unordered list can use asterisks
Or minuses
Or pluses

I’m an inline-style link

I’m an inline-style link with title

I’m a reference-style link

I’m a relative reference to a repository file

You can use numbers for reference-style link definitions

Or leave it empty and use the link text itself.

URLs and URLs in angle brackets will automatically get turned into links. http://www.example.com or http://www.example.com and sometimes example.com (but not on Github, for example).

Some text to show that the reference links can follow later.

Here’s our logo (hover to see the title text):

Inline-style:

Reference-style:

Inline code has back-ticks around it.

var s = "JavaScript syntax highlighting";
alert(s);

s = "Python syntax highlighting"
print s

No language indicated, so no syntax highlighting. 
But let's throw in a <b>tag</b>.

Colons can be used to align columns.

Tables	Are	Cool
col 3 is	right-aligned	$1600
col 2 is	centered	$12
zebra stripes	are neat	$1

There must be at least 3 dashes separating each header cell. The outer pipes (|) are optional, and you don’t need to make the raw Markdown line up prettily. You can also use inline Markdown.

Markdown	Less	Pretty
Still	`renders`	nicely
1	2	3

Blockquotes are very handy in email to emulate reply text. This line is part of the same quote.

Quote break.

This is a very long line that will still be quoted properly when it wraps. Oh boy let’s keep writing to make sure this is long enough to actually wrap for everyone. Oh, you can put Markdown into a blockquote.

Here’s a line for us to start with.

This line is separated from the one above by two newlines, so it will be a separate paragraph.

This line is also a separate paragraph, but… This line is only separated by a single newline, so it’s a separate line in the same paragraph.