It's a good list, but the best static site generator is a human person writing .html files. All this static site generator stuff is unneeded complexity for those that enjoy complexity.
> All this static site generator stuff is unneeded complexity for those that enjoy complexity.
I don't think so, and will give a few examples why.
I like Pelican because when working manually it is easy to mess up some HTML tags, forget to update an article listing, category listing, or RSS feed.
Creating and adding PlantUML diagrams is more work manually than it is when integrated with Pelican.
Pelican even tells me when I accidentally mess up an internal link.
It simplifies my publishing such that I actually have enough time and energy to do so, and in that sense it is not unneeded complexity.
These static site generators are mostly operating under the same conceptual model of what a website is and that's both very restrictive and brings in requirements that aren't actually requirements. Posts and categories and date dependent lists. Blogs aren't the only way. You can just make pages. You don't have to 'publish' and have every single page be exactly like every other page on your site.
Maybe they should be called static blog generators instead.
Pelican does have support for random pages.
If also doesn't stop you from copying your own pages to the output directory after generating.
In that sense it is more of a markdown or RST to HTML converter.
It has great blog support but doesn't exclude other uses, such as documentation generation.
I had the same frustration, but my experience with Gatsby and Hugo is that you just need to get past the how-tos and quick-starts. To get started quickly, you need a lot of structure in place, and most people just want a blog, so that's what the starter themes and tutorials cater to. If you get past the tutorials and get comfortable in the official documentation, the functionality turns out to be more general.
When I tried Hugo the first time, I took me more than a day to have a website with the look and feel I wanted. The static generators are good for getting some initial website up and running, but they have so many hidden and poorly documented features that it takes enormous amount of time to customize them.
On the other hand when the site is up and running changes a very fast and easy - mostly because of the markup language support.
