[Straw-devel] Re: Adding blog posting support

[Jan Alonzo]

Eric Gaumer <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello,

Hi,

>
>       I think Straw is a great application and I use it everyday.
> I've recently gotten into the whole blogging scene. I've been using
> Straw to read feeds and BloGTK to post. Recently a friend and I have
> been contemplating on merging the two bodies of code into one application
> (both use Python/PyGTK).

Thanks for using the app. :)

>
> We're basing the concept around how email works. I read/write email using
> a single application. Some abstract goals would involve being able to read
> a feed and simply reply (we want to try and use familiar terminology) to
> a feed. Replying could involve posting to your blog (account) about the
> feed you're reading or (if you don't have a blog) it could simply involve
> posting a comment to the feed. It would also handle all the trackback and
> pingback stuff.
>
> We haven't worked out any of the technical aspects, we're just dancing
> with conceptual notions at this point. We would support Blogger, MetaWeblog,
> and Movable Type. BloGTK does a decent job right now and we would base
> a lot of code off that project (which seems pretty decadent these days).
>
> The idea is that Straw could be an application that really takes the whole
> blogging/RSS/XML thing to another level. We want to allow users to not only
> read feeds but reply to feeds and manipulate their blogs or at least, post
> comments.
>

I think the work would be more on the blog poster side since it handles blog
accounts and other stuff like posting, pingback, and trackbacks. If blogtk has
a D-Bus[1] interface for posting comments (or to one's blog), then I don't mind
adding a comment-reply or a post-to-blog (or something like that) feature to
Straw that basically calls blogtk for posting comments or replies. That way,
there won't be unnecessary maintenance work on Straw and both Straw (or other
feed readers) and blogtk benefits from your work.

> Is there any type of plugin architecture for straw? I don't imagine it
> would difficult to integrate such a tool since it's written in Python.

There's no plugin architecture for Straw since there's no use-case for it atm. 
:-)

> Does anyone feel this would be a worthwhile project? Can anyone see any
> potential roadblocks?

I suggest that you should just enhance blogtk (or any blog-poster out there)
rather than writing another one. Saves you time and other projects can benefit
as well. Just my 0.02c.
>
> Admittedly, neither of us are experts on the blog APIs nor or we heavily
> experienced in Python. Most of our experience is with C/C++ but we've been
> doing some light hacks on BloGTK (fixing issues) and we suddenly realized
> the potential of the language.

Good luck with Python. It's a fantastic language. 

Cheers,

[1] http://www.freedesktop.org/Software/dbus

-- 
Jan Alonzo                          <address@hidden>

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