eXp0stulate - changes already

[tonybaldwin]

I've already made a few changes to eXp0stulate, primarily in the gui.
Rather than have a menu with options for posting to the 3 relevant services (livejournal, insanejournal, and dreamwidth), I have made buttons, and placed the "Post to: (which journal?)"(so you can post to a community, etc.) at the bottom of the interface.

Here's a new screenshot:

I have plans to edit the "Insert" menu, since DW uses slightly different tags than IJ and LJ (which both use stock LJ tags, for cut, user, community, etc.).
I may add more html options to that menu, as well (bold, italic, small, big, headings-h1, h2, etc., horizontal ruler, paragraph, blockquote, lists, etc.).
I also think that html syntax highlighting would be pretty awesome, so one could more readily see errors in html tags in an entry, before posting.
And, of course, spellchecking would be gro0vy.
Beyond that, there's other work to do. Currently eXp0stulate uses the old, flat post method. I'd like to get it writing out to xml, so it will function with the xml-rpc interface, which will then allow me to add both blogger and wordpress functions (which will also allow me to use it with my baldwinsoftware/blog).
I'd also like to incorporate a few more features, such as downloading and editing older entries. Right now, it only posts an entry.
This is a drawback, because, if the user finds an error in their entry once it's been posted, they have to edit it on-site, rather than in eXp0stulate.
Not convenient.
If I add in the ftp function from tcltext and tclup, heck, it could be a combo blogging client and html editor...maybe...
So, I have a full TODO list on the eXp0stulate wiki page.

One advantage I do think it has is, once you've posted an entry, the text widget does NOT clear (unless you deliberately clear it), so, the entry remains loaded, and you can post to all three current services (IJ, LJ, DW) simply by pressing the three buttons at the bottom of the interface, and, if you like, even x-post to a few communities by modifying the "Post to: [which journal?]" field and pressing said buttons again.
(In Logjam, for instance, one must logout/login to the distinct services, reloading the entry before changing services, in order to xpost...here it's just, write an entry, and click, click, click...)
That's convenient, I think.

The user must be certain to make sure that "Post to: [which journal?]" is filled in with the name of the journal to which they are posting (their username if posting to their own journal, the name of a community, if that is what they wish). In TKLJ and Therapy, I had that field default to the user's username for the relevant service, but, since this program posts to 3 (and hopefully, in the future, 5 or more) services, defaulting to any specific username seemed impractical. I have a username on LJ that differs from that which I use on IJ and DW. I suspect others may have differing usernames, as well, so the field simply defaults to "which journal?", which means, if the user does not alter the field, they will be trying (unsuccessfully) to post to http://which journal?.livejournal.com/, or ij or dw, as the case may be.

It would be good to load menus with the user's communities, and also add user icon functionality, but the user icon feature would be useless for blogger and wordpress, of course, so I may just dispense with that.

Some might ask,"Why, Tony? Why make another blogging client for LJ, IJ, and DW?"
To which I answer,"Well...

1. I keep blogs on several services, and want to make it as convenient and efficient as possible to X-post to all 6 blogs I keep;


2. I want some features the others don't have;


3. Why climb the mountain? because it's there... (i.e., it was something to do, and I like hacking);


4. No such blogging client exists written in TclTk, and I like to promote the language;

Anyway, I've got to get away from this project at the moment and return to my translation work.

If you want to get on board and hack this thing up with me, let me know!
I'll add you to the baldwinsoftware.com/wiki, forums, and invite you to the baldwinsoftware googlegroup/listserv.

be well,
tony

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posted with eXp0stulate

Comments

[catness]

Yay! well done, that's a lot of progress! I agree that Logjam is very primitive in respect to crossposting, and I find all the other reasons very reasonable :)

Btw dunno about Wordpress but Blogger doesn't use XML-RPC, it uses Atom API. So all the low-level functions are really different, unfortunately. But the API is fairly simple to use.

[tonybaldwin]

Yeah, I just saw that this morning, that blogger now uses, if I understand correctly, some distinct Google API. Perhaps it is the same as Atom?
LJ, IJ, DW, and DJ can work with Atom, too, no? I think maybe Wordpress will too, but need to look into that.
I know that IJ, DJ, LJ, DW AND WP all work with xml-rpc.
Best if I don't have to write three different ways to post, but two isn't too bad, one would simplify the whole thing.
Heck, I could write one post process and manage where posts are going by setting the relevant variables.
Hate to say it, but, at the moment, I have 4 distinct post processes written into this program.
Not the most efficient way of doing that.
I should pare that down....easy enough.
just change the buttons from [command dwpost] [command ljpost], etc., to
[post (lj)], [post (dw)], etc.
and have one proc
proc post (serv) { where $serv is the relevant server/site), or something.
Dunno why I didn't just do that...I'm always going the log way around the barn...

I'm wondering what it would take to communicate with Facebook, too.
I considering incorporating my denter/tweeter into the same app...if I could add google buzz and facebook, maybe even myspace, the user could have a whole social networking dashboard in one application.
Writing something like that in php might be useful, really...a single page with forms for tweet/denting/buzzing/facebook status, & crossposting to multiple blogs.
I should learn php.
But, in the meantime, I'm either going to do that with Tcl, using what I have here, or in Python.
I haven't succeeded in tweeting/denting with tcl's http post method, oddly, while I have with python's urllib.
All my blog posting code is using tcl with http post, though.
haven't tried that with the py urllib.
I just think it would be convenient to have ONE APP TO RULE THEM ALL on the social networking scene.
I'm such a geek...

:)
./tony

[catness]

Nah, LJ-clones do not work with Atom. I've heard that DW admins are thinking of implementing it eventually.

Oh but what's the point of posting a long post to twitter if it's cut to 140 chars and one has always click something to read the full post. With Facebook, it makes more sense, but if one is posting as a note (or whatever it's called), not a status update. But sure, one unified application can be convenient anyway. One can use it either for short updates (twitter/FB/googlebuzz) or for long updates (various blogs) as they like. I'm just afraid that it will become too bloated because all these servers have different features which all have to be supported. For example, only LJ clones have user icons and moods, and these are extremely important for me (that was the reason I had started my own client, to support different sets of icons in a convenient way ;) and Blogger has a distinction between a draft post and a published post - I find it useless but maybe somebody needs it the same way as I need my icons...

[tonybaldwin]

Oh, no, I wouldn't send a blog post to twitter or identi.ca or buzz or fb.
I'd send the url of the post and the subject line, or something.
I could try to incorporate a url shortener, even, perhaps.
Or, in any case, I didn't mean that a blog post would even necessarily be connected to the tweet/dent part (other than being in the same gui).
There would be a separate field for tweets/dents, as in the two tweeter/denters I've already made
Tweetie.py and iDen.tcl