Telar Documentation

Official documentation site for Telar, a minimal-computing framework for creating layered IIIF visual narratives for digital scholarship, public exhibitions, community storytelling, and classroom projects.

About

This is a bilingual (English/Spanish) documentation site built with Jekyll using a custom docs theme with Pagefind search.

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.0+
• Bundler
• Node.js (for Pagefind search indexing)

Basic Setup (without search)

# Install dependencies
bundle install

# Serve locally with live reload
bundle exec jekyll serve --livereload

# View at http://localhost:4000

With Search

Pagefind requires a two-step process (can't use jekyll serve as it overwrites the search index):

# Build Jekyll site
bundle exec jekyll build

# Build search index and serve
npx pagefind --site _site --serve

# View at http://localhost:1414

For regular development without search, use jekyll serve. Search is automatically built during GitHub Actions deployment.

Bilingual Structure

This site uses a manual bilingual approach without plugins:

• English pages: Standard .md files (e.g., docs/1-getting-started.md)
• Spanish pages: .es.md extension (e.g., docs/1-getting-started.es.md)
• URL structure:
  • English: /, /about/, /docs/...
  • Spanish: /es/, /acerca-de/, /documentacion/...

Adding Content

1. Create English page: docs/new-page.md
2. Add frontmatter with lang: en and permalink:
3. Create Spanish version: docs/new-page.es.md
4. Add frontmatter with lang: es and Spanish permalink:

Navigation

The custom navigation (_includes/components/site_nav.html) groups pages by language, showing:

• English section with English pages
• Español section with Spanish pages

The language switcher appears at the top-right of each page.

Customization

• Theme styles: _sass/custom/custom.scss
• Logo: images/telar.png (placeholder - replace with final logo)
• Site config: _config.yml

Credits

Telar is developed by Adelaida Ávila, Juan Cobo Betancourt, Santiago Muñoz, and students and scholars at the UCSB Archives, Memory, and Preservation Lab, the UT Archives, Mapping, and Preservation Lab, and Neogranadina.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Caribbean Digital Scholarship Collective, the Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning (CITRAL) at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the UCSB Library, the Routes of Enslavement in the Americas University of California MRPI, and the Department of History of The University of Texas at Austin.

Telar is built with:

• Jekyll - Static site generator
• UniversalViewer - IIIF viewer
• Bootstrap 5 - CSS framework
• iiif-static - IIIF tile generator

It is based on Paisajes Coloniales, and inspired by:

• Wax - Minimal computing for digital exhibitions
• CollectionBuilder - Static digital collections