tony baldwin / blog

• my livejournal


• my insanejournal


• my dreamwidth


• AND, NOW: my NEW Iziblog!

Xpostulate also has deadjournal posting integrated, but, since I don't have a deadjournal, I have not tested that.

Additionally, as some of you already know, Xpostulate also tweets to twitter and sends dents to identi.ca.

Earlier today I added DW-specific tags, and some additional html insertion features, as well.

ALSO: I initiated a project for Xpostulate on googlecode this morning.

There's still work to be done, of course...Plenty of work...
All the same, considering I started this project less than a week ago, I'm fairly satisifed!
I have already released a viable, crossposting blogging and microblogging client.

Sometimes I'm so awesome, I can't stand myself...

:P

./tony.b

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