MfGames Writing Tools

A Slew of (Breaking) Fixes (MfGames Writing Tools)

2026-01-17T06:00:00Z

We've just pushed up a new version of mfgames-writing-js. Naturally, this started with the usual process of doing a little housekeeping, and bringing packages up to date.

The main focus was to fix two bugs:

Unfortunately, we had to make a breaking change and bumped the major version of some of the packages, which also requires at least a minor update to the other changes to pick up the new version ranges.

And then what followed was an embarassing set of NPM package updates as we tried to get everything working consistently and feeding into dependent projects like fedran-writing-setup-flake which is a mass setup scrip for all the writing projects on fedran.com.

Along the way, we also introduced --log-level support so mfgames-writing-format build wasn't quite as noisy.

Short Version

If you use mfgames-writing-js, update all your packages to the latest and things should Just Work™. If they don't, please don't hesitate to report an issue or contact Dulan

Pipeline Exclusions

Added an exclude to pipelines in the same pattern as the content elements:

contents:
  - element: chapter
    source: pipeline.md
    pipeline:
      - module: "@mfgames-writing/hyphen-pipeline"
        exclude:
          editions: [docx]

This caused a difficulty with an undocumented element in hyphen-pipeline which allowed for a regular expression to ignore certain words that caused problem with hyphenation. This was moved to exclude.regex.

contents:
  - element: chapter
    source: pipeline.md
    pipeline:
      - module: "@mfgames-writing/hyphen-pipeline"
        exclude:
          editions: [docx]
          regex: ["^bob$"]

Because this changed some projects in use, it was treated as a breaking change and bumped the version.

Section Breaks

When we write in Markdown, we always use *** for section breaks.

---
title: Chapter One
---

Something happened.

---

After the break.

However, proejcts like mfgames-writing-setup-flake use prettier which always converted the *** into --- which is also a proper Markdown rule (which we use as a section break in stories).

Due to interactions with SmartyPaths, those --- were helpfully turned into an em-dash (—). We put in a little patch code that an em-dash on a line by itself is considered a rule for section breaks and turned back into ---.

Output Directory

Another thing that we've done with mfgames-writing-setup-flake is put all the output files into the build/release folder to keep them out of the root directory of the repository. But there was a little but where .docx files couldn't handle that.

We fixed it.

Logging

Also, it was a little annoying having so much data that we added a --log-level to control output. It defaults to info but can also be trace, debug, info, warn, and error.

Moved Repository to MfGames (MfGames Writing Tools)

2025-01-12T06:00:00Z

It's been a few years and this project has moved homes a few times. We realized in the last day that we haven't been paying attention to where this project was housed compared to when we abandoned GitLab because of their enshittification.

The current home for mfgames-writing-js is now on src.mfgames.com and it now has a fancier home page.

We are going to spend a little time spurcing up the library, bringing it to a modern version of TypeScript, and infrastructure. This will be considered a break changing since the underlying libraries have jumped significantly in version.

Added `@mfgames-writing/opf` and `@mfgames-writing/ncx` (MfGames Writing Tools)

2021-02-03T06:00:00Z

In the process to convert mfgames-writing into a monorepo, two packages were missed. These were @mfgames-writing/opf and @mfgames-writing/ncx which are used to create the OPF and NCX files inside the EPUB files. Along the way, Dylan also normalized some of the formatting, cleaned up a bit of debris still left behind, and normalized the new packages in terms of formatting and testing.

Due to philosophical opinions, we moved the packages back to Gitlab and off Sourcehut.

Switched to a monorepo and rehosted on SourceHut (MfGames Writing Tools)

2020-07-26T05:00:00Z

Because of the difficulties of the release chain such as when epub2 requires changes to format which requires changes to contracts, Dylan has switched the entire suite of mfgames-writing into a monorepo (single Git repository) using Yarn workspaces and Lerna. Combined with Typescript's cross-project building, it appears to have developed into a fairly simple workflow for adding features.

We are still using sematic-release to handle releases along with Husky to ensure compliance on the various commits to make the release process work.

Due to not reading the code very well (e.g., not looking), the OPF and NCX packages weren't migrated into the repository but will be as a future task.

We also migrated the tiny number of tests from Mocha to Jest.

In the process, we moved the canon home from Gitlab to Sourcehut. The reasons are varied, but Dylan found the UI of Sourcehut to be easier and it has the needed features and a compatible philosophy for the project.

Overall, there are no significant changes despite the version bumps.