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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
maverick wrote:
I’ve viewed its development to be more along the lines of a plugin/mod rather than part of Textpattern, whose author hasn’t continued its development. Am I wrong in thinking that? If not, some of the frustration might be from differing expectations about whose responsibility it is?
When I started using Textpattern, a desktop blogging app would of come in very handy. I remember those first few weeks of awkward Textile usage, it felt foreign, could of used a tour guide. Now, I’m familiar enough with Textile that I can enter a short article in the time it takes me to fire up a desktop blogging app.
Core functionality or plugin? – In the grand scheme of things, being able to hand someone w-bloggar and a userid/password to his/her new site would be priceless.
We Love TXP . TXP Themes . TXP Tags . TXP Planet . TXP Make
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
Out of curiosity I’ve tried using several different desktop blogging apps. It never “connected” enough for me to stick with it and develop the habit of using them. I wouldn’t rule out trying again in the future, though. My intro to Textile was similar. At first I kept setting my articles to xhtml instead, but now use Textile most of the time.
I agree that keeping the rpc server functionality is a potential plus – and for some, priceless :-). I was only indicating that it may not be clear who should be maintaining it. Since we are a volunteer driven community, this might be one of those areas that a non Core Dev could easily share the load. That’s why I’m glad to see some folks working on it.
I’ve got to go back to the books and learn php and javascript so I can help out in the future. :D
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#15 2008-01-08 21:46:20
- guiguibonbon
- Member
- Registered: 2006-02-20
- Posts: 296
Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
Core functionality or plugin?
Either way, it’s in the svn, and I’m surprised those few obvious bugs iblastoff collected haven’t been committed yet.
Maybe try the mailing list to shake things up ?
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
I’m an angry mini-mob. Yay!
Thanks iblastoff. I’m probably going to email you for advice on implementing the changes you’re suggesting.
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
I’ve hopefully fixed any problems mentioned in this thread here and those discussed over there as well, as far as I was able to reproduce the issues mentioned.
Fixed:
- Restrict posts list to a selected section (i.e. blog), do not list every post.
- Use category titles instead of category names for all category-name-based RPC calls, preserve category settings through edits.
- Use post slugs or basenames specified via the
wp_slugormt_basenamestructure elements.
Unresolved:
- Time zone issues
Not implemented:
- Media uploads and other goodies.
Compatibility:
- Txp 4.0.5+
Tested with Windows Live Writer, Zoundry and to an extent even with w.bloggar.
You can grab an interim copy here [.zip] or here [.tar.gz]. Depending on the feedback, I will eventually add this to the core distribution.
Last edited by wet (2008-01-26 21:12:46)
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
Wow, Robert, thanks very much for making that available. I can confirm that posting with Marsedit via the metaweblog api works very well. Sadly, the movable type API is still dead in the water for me – it can create an article but you have to resave it in the textpattern interface for it to exist on anywhere other than the front page of a blog. It also can’t seem to create the category correctly.
I’d love to be able to set excerpt/body, assign keywords, and edit custom fields (the latter would require some extension in Marsedit too, so I’m not going to get my hopes up, heh) but for now this is a great improvement.
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
Textpattern does not support the creation of new categories through XMLRPC, you will have to go through the web interface for that. I haven’t even found any evidence that the creation of categories is specifed by either Metaweblog or MT. Any pointers are welcome.
This is what works for me with Windows Live Writer as a client (which observes the API protocol quite well, I think):
| API | post to specific section | write body | write excerpt | set keywords | assign categories | set publishing date | allow/disallow comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MT | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes | yes (bug fixed) |
| Metaweblog | yes | yes | n/a | n/a | yes | yes | n/a |
I’ve found yet another bug which affected the comment on/off state and updated the download files ([.zip], [.tar.gz]) with a corrected version of txplib_wrapper.php. I think we might need a little bit of assistance from Red Sweater to pinpoint any issues which do not show up with Live Writer or any other Windows client, as I don’t own a Mac.
If there’s any way for a client to specify custom fields through XMLRPC I’d yet have to find a specification for this. Pointers, anybody?
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
Sorry, I mis-spoke — I meant “assign” rather than “create” a category on a post. The category assignation works with metaweblog and not MT.
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
It seems that custom field support was recently added into the Wordpress XML-RPC implementation: http://www.red-sweater.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=578
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
The recent development in this area has surpassed my wildest imaginations. Incredible! As for the possibility of adding support for custom fields — what’s to stop you from extending the MovableType API with methods specific for Textpattern? Why not create a TextPattern API? I’m sure Daniel Jalkut (Of RedSweater.com) and others would be more than happy to implement these hooks in their desktop clients. Being the first blogging client to fully and truly support TextPattern is after all a pretty good sales argument.
If you’re going to dream — why not dream big.
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
I think that is would suffice to align our efforts with WordPress’s, as long as it fits within our data model. From the patch I saw in WordPress’s code repository, this can be taken for granted. I’m still waiting for some more reports of how the current solution works across various clients before any extension to the current protocol becomes a topic.
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Re: [feedback] How To Win Friends Who Love Desktop Blogging...
It’s really great that you guys are making so much progress. To conceptualize where you might go beyond MT, keep in mind that WordPress’s API is a logical extension to MT, and in fact even in MT 4.1’s latest development, they seem to be adopting some of the WordPress API extensions.
I would like to encourage you not to create a unique TextPattern API. Although it can be tempting to go off on one’s own to get the pet features of an API that one wants, I think you’ll get a lot more leverage out of sticking with the semi-standard implementations that you’ve been emulating. The chances of success are much greater when you can work with any client that already supports an existing API, as opposed to asking that they implement support for a new one (even if it’s only a slight variation on an existing one).
So, I agree that gelling on the MT implementation is a great idea for now. And if you decide to elaborate, I suggest implementing the WordPress extensions. If you have other ideas that are not met by the existing API, I strongly suggest getting in touch with the WordPress API developer, Joseph Scott. WordPress is basically the “cohesive point” for further development of the API at this point.
Daniel
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