Assets are very similar to pages. A page consists of a directory with  
a content and a meta file, and so does an asset. So, if you have a  
file named "mycoolpicture.png" and you want to make it an asset, you  
put it into a directory named "mycoolpicture" inside the "assets"  
directory, along with a file named "mycoolpicture.yaml".

The YAML meta file can contain two attributes: "binary", which is true  
or false depending on whether it's a textual asset or not (which  
determines the kind of filters you can use on it), and "filters",  
which is a list of filters to run on the asset.

A really quick example:

        ~% nanoc cs assets_test
        ~% cd assets_test
        ~/assets_test% mkdir assets/mycoolpicture
        ~/assets_test% touch assets/mycoolpicture/mycoolpicture.yaml
        ~/assets_test% cp ~/somepic.png assets/mycoolpicture/mycoolpicture.png

If you only want to copy the file from the assets directory into the  
output directory, set binary to true and make sure the list of filters  
is empty, like this:

        # Just copy it to the output directory
        filters: []
        # This is a binary file, not a textual file
        binary: true

And of course you can then compile the site:

        ~/assets_test% nanoc co
        Compiling site...
              create  [0.00s]  output/index.html
              create  [0.01s]  output/assets/mycoolpicture.png
        Site compiled in 0.02s.

If you don't filter an asset, though, it may be faster to simply  
directly store the assets in the output directory. Copying an asset  
from assets/ to output/ takes time, especially when it's large (and  
filtering an asset takes even longer) so this will result in a speed-
up. Just make sure you don't accidentally delete everything in the  
output directory then. :)

Hope this helps!

Denis

Jayson

On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 4:27 AM, Denis Defreyne

nanoc comes with a single binary filter (I know, it's not a lot) named  
image_science_thumbnail, which creates a thumbnail version of the  
asset (which obviously only works when it's an image). This filter  
requires a "thumbnail_size" attribute to be set, which contains the  
max width or height in pixels of the thumbnail.

It is possible to write your own binary filters. I've explained how to  
do so at <http://nanoc.stoneship.org/help/manual/chapter-3/#writing-binary-filters
 >. It's probably also a good idea to take a look at the source of  
Nanoc::BinaryFilters::ImageScienceThumbnail so you can use this binary  
filters as a template for your own filters.

I just realised that the image_science_thumbnail filter is not  
documented at all... will fix that.

Regards,

Denis

http://github.com/bomberstudios/nanoc_extensions/tree/master/filters

They are (slightly) documented at
http://github.com/bomberstudios/nanoc_extensions/tree/master/README.m...

As Denis said, check the nanoc docs. Also, the nanoc source is a nice
place to learn about filters : )