Oldskool Inc.

Welcome to issue 0x48. This first phile is the editorial and the manual for the publishing framework itself — meta, we know, but every good zine documents its own toolchain.

What this is

This site is generated by a small plain-Node build script. There is no framework, no bundler, no megabytes of dependencies. Content lives in content/ as Markdown and JSON; the build turns it into static HTML styled after the classic underground e-zines: 76 columns, monospace, ASCII banners, hexadecimal issue notation.

Adding an issue

Create a directory under content/issues/ named with the issue's hex id, e.g. 0x49, and drop an issue.json in it:

{
  "volume": "0x10",
  "issue": "0x49",
  "date": "2026-08-01",
  "editorial": "..."
}

Adding a phile

Add a numbered Markdown file to the issue directory — NN-slug.md. The number becomes the phile number (#0xNN), the frontmatter supplies the title, author handle, and abstract:

---
title: My Article
author: somehandle
abstract: One-line summary for the TOC and search.
---

# Body goes here

Run npm run build and the phile shows up in the issue TOC, on the author's page, and in the search index automatically.

The look

Pick your weapon from the font switcher up top: Amiga Topaz for that Workbench cracktro feel, or the IBM VGA/EGA/CGA bitmap fonts for pixel-perfect CP437 and ANSI art. The screen mode selector flips between paper, ANSI, amber, and green phosphor. Your choice is remembered across pages.

Live text effects

Drop the fxtext widget into any phile to get a text-driven effect box: a textarea whose text is rendered live through a demoscene effect you pick from the menu (sine-scroller, plasma, fire, wave, glow). Type in the box and watch it move:

Embed it anywhere with one tag plus the script:

<div class="fxtext" data-text="YOUR TEXT"
     data-effect="scroller" data-height="160"></div>
<script src="../assets/js/fx/fxtext.js"></script>

data-effect is one of scroller, plasma, fire, wave, glow; the box renders in whatever bitmap font you've selected up top.