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Wednesday, August 10, 2005
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Thursday, August 04, 2005
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Imho, Instant Outlining is a workgroup application.
It's going to be hard to write this note without sounding stern, so please understand that I'm smiling while I'm writing this, but am just trying to keep my server from melting down.
First, this is the third or fourth time I've implemented Instant Outlining, depending on how you count.
The first time, it worked spectacularly. Every other time it's gone splat, and not worked.
Here's the primary thing I learned -- Instant Outlining is not like RSS.
In RSS you can subscribe to 100 feeds, no problem. Some people subscribe to 1000 feeds. It's a bit of work to keep up with them, but a human being can do it. But with I/O, the most you can do is four or five. It's a workgroup application, not a global one.
So when I see people encouraging people to subscribe to their outline the way they would encourage people to subscribe to their RSS feed, I think "Oh boy we're headed for a meltdown again."
One of the problems is that I/O polls every minute, and by convention RSS polls every hour.
Another is that RSS is tuned to make it easy for processing programs to find the new stuff, but OPML is designed to transmit the entire status of a project or even worse, a set of projects. This is fantastic for people I work closely with, but totally not workable for broadcasting to hundreds of people. That's why I'm not using my instant outline to manage my work. I don't at this time have a workgroup that I'm part of that uses I/O. I hope to again someday be, it was fantastic (we shipped Radio 8 with it in 2002).
So, if you find that dozens of people are subscribing to your outline, I think you're headed for trouble, largely because they're going to expect you to subscribe to their outlines. But then what have you accomplished? You've just recreated a mail list. Why not just use a mail list? It's much more efficient.
Anyway, I just thought I should share some of this. [support News]
5:16:16 PM 
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Wednesday, August 03, 2005
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Monday, August 01, 2005
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Version 0.59 has three weblog appearance features.
Three changes in version 0.59, all related to the appearance of your OPML weblog.
1. You can change the number of days that appear on the home page. Choose "Days on home page" from the OPML Weblog sub-menu of the community menu. Enter a number between 1 and 10. Click on OK. View your blog, you should see more or less days on your home page. You can see this on my blog, where I have set the number of days to 4, which seems like a nice number.
2. There are now links under the calendar leading to the previous month and the next month. They are not linked to anything if there is no previous month or next month. They work on archive pages as well. This was an essential feature since today is August 1 and as many have pointed out, July posts would have become hard-to-access without the links.
3. The Last Modified readout on your home page is now expressed in your local time zone. Of course this will only mean something to people who aren't in the Eastern time zone of the US. This feature is enabled when you change the number of days on your home page for the first time (that's when the time zone info is transmitted to the server).
To get the update, as always, choose Get Latest Code from the Community menu. [support News]
10:46:21 AM
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Friday, July 29, 2005
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Monday, July 25, 2005
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Server-side enhancement for blog items with links.
Jim Roepcke asks on his new OPML blog a question that Staci Kramer posted when the blogging tool was first introduced to the testers. Why isn't anything done with outline nodes that are links? The answer is -- there's no good reason, we should display an icon that points to the item that's being linked to.
Then I think I saw a few other people link to content this way and get puzzled why it doesn't work the way they think it should, so I decided today must be the day to make it work the way people want it to.
First, you don't have to update anything to get the enhancement, it's all in server-side code.
To test it out, link to something from an item in your blog outline, and save it. You might want to make it a podcast, like I did. (If you do, it will automatically generate the enclosure element in your RSS feed.)
Look at your blog. You should see a small picture of a speaker next to your post, just before the permalink icon. If you click it, the browser opens the object you point to. That's about it. [support News]
6:57:36 PM
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Version 0.53 pings when you update your blog.
Okay, I didn't like the way the thing I did last night handled changes. I want easy to read changes, just like the ones weblogs.com produces. So I changed the way changes are propogated, and had the OPML Editor ping a special ping-center just for OPML Editor users. This way we can easily monitor updates to blogs from this point on, Murphy-willing of course.
How to
Just choose Get Latest Code from the Community menu and your blog updates will start pinging.
As before, watch for changes on http://changes.opml.org/.
And as a bonus, we now have a changes.xml, for Technorati, Feedster, PubSub, IceRocket, and all the other groovy blog search engines, baby. (Sorry, I just saw Austin Powers a couple of days ago.) [support News]
10:27:58 AM
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Version 0.50 checks if updates and/or Show Notes are available.
This is the last major feature required before the first public release of the Windows OPML Editor.
This pair of features is essential because the next group of users may not pay close attention to learn of new features and fixes or join a mail list, or subscribe to a feed. I want to be sure we can push fixes and features to all users who join the community after this point.
To test the new features, first choose Get Latest Code from the Community menu. Then quit the app, re-launch. You should see a dialog that looks like this. If you choose to install the latest software, you'll just get the same update you already have, no harm in that. A window should open containing this outline.
The real test for the feature should come in about 24 hours, after you quit and relaunch, and the dialog appears (assuming I've released some new parts, quite likely). That time you should get some new features.
This is a complicated sequence, and will likely require a few iterations and careful bug reports to get it right. I'm here at the computer for the next three days to get this stuff working. [support News]
10:26:37 AM
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Version 0.48 has technology for synchronizing installations.
Here's the scenario, suppose you have the OPML Editor (or compatible, someday there will probably be compatibles) installed on more than one machine. When you set up the second copy, you want to have all your public files installed there too. In fact, some people expect this to just work (a clue that it would be a worthwhile feature).
So over the last few days while in Cambridge, I programmed the core of this facility, but did not wire it up to any user interface, because I wanted a few geekish users to try it out first, before inflicting it on any users.
If you're pretty technical and want to give it a try, here's what to do:
1. From the Windows desktop, open My Documents, then copy the folder named OPML to a safe place, in case anything goes wrong. This is a very important step.
2. Bring the OPML Editor to the front, Jump to dotOpmlSuite.folderWatcher.getFilesChangedSince. Click on Run. It will automatically download all the files you uploaded since July 1, 2005. You can try changing the date if you like to see what happens.
3. Choose Open Log Outline from the Community menu. There should be two entries there. One quick one, that says how many files are to be downloaded, and another reporting that the files were downloaded.
***How to report
I thought we'd use the new OPML-Code-Review mail list, but no one has signed up yet, so report the result as a comment here, or on the OPML-Support mail list. I need confirmation that it works oin a few people's machines before proceeding.
If you really want to do a thorough test, install a fresh copy of the OPML Editor somewhere, Get Latest Code, and then try to get your files following the instructions above. [support News]
10:26:20 AM
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Version 0.47 has a category router (!).
This is a small feature with a big footprint, and lots of R&D behind it, and a chance of changing blogging. It's that remarkable an idea. So listen up, please. ;->
1. It's part of the blogging tool, but you can actually use it with any outline edited with the OPML Editor.
2. To use it, you create an outline of categories, your own personal taxonomy. You edit this outline by clicking on the new Categories button in the blog editing window. Screen shot.
3. When you click the button an outline pops up. Initially it's empty. Add something like this. You don't have to use my headlines. Use names of family members. Or topics you like to write about. This is just for experimental purposes. Don't give it too much thought.
4. When you're ready, click the Rebuild button. It rebuilds the pop-up menu that you'll see in the next step.
5. Now bring your blog outline to the front, click on any line, and right-click. A pop-up menu appears, with the topics you entered in your outline. Choose one. Save. Build RSS. Congratulations -- you just routed the post to a category!
6. How do I know? Look at the RSS feed. Scroll to the post. (Here's an example from my feed.) See how there's a category element in it? It's simple, loosely joined, and (imho) cooooool.
7. You can add as many categories as you like. It also shows up in the OPML.
8. There's already software that watches for these category elements, like Technorati and probably Feedster and PubSub.
9. Does it work with podcasts? Of course!
10. What else? Lots. Category-routing is a key feature for lots of new apps. First let's make sure this works, then we can talk about next steps.
11. To get the new version, choose Get Latest Code from the Community menu. Your comments, questions, kudos, accolades, etc are welcome.
12. Happy Independence Day. [support News]
10:25:50 AM
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Version 0.46 has import/export of subscription lists.
First, an important caveat -- the format for subscription lists in this release is provisional, and may change. You should not export a subscription list with the expectation that any software will be able to read it. As new versions come out you may want to depend on the format. You can't be sure it will continue to be supported until version 1.0 is released. You are warned!
To update, choose Get Latest Code from the Community menu. (You may have to quit and restart the application to see the changes in the menu.)
This version is the first to have an import/export capability for the Instant Outliner subscription list.
To export your subscription list, choose Export from the Instant Outliner sub-menu of the Community menu. A dialog will appear, offering to save the list in the instantOutliner sub-folder of the www folder. If you save it there, your subscription list will be publicly available on the web. If you want it to be private, choose a location outside of the www folder.
To import, reverse the steps. Choose the Import command, same location, and choose a file that you exported (or received through other software). After importing, a dialog will appear saying how many new subscriptions were created. It will not over-write existing subscriptions. [support News]
10:25:07 AM
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How to enclose a podcast with the OPML Editor blogging tool.
1. Choose Open today's outline from the Your OPML Weblog sub-menu of the Community menu.
2. Add a headline that describes your podcast.
3. Right-click on the headline, choose Add Link from the popup menu. Enter the URL of your MP3 file.
4. Save.
5. Click on the Build RSS button.
That's it. If you look at the feed you'll see the item has an enclosure. [support News]
10:24:46 AM
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Version 0.41 is an outline-based blogging tool.
Finally, here is a blogging tool that does not have a browser-based interface. It runs from a folder structure of OPML files that live in your www folder, and are uploaded as you modify them. There's a dynamic server app running at blogs.opml.org, that renders the OPML files in the familiar weblog form. Of course since all the data is stored in folders and OPML files, this is "small pieces, loosely joined" -- client side tools and server side environments can replace my parts, with only one or two XML-RPC calls to exchange preferences data that are too small to fit in an outline. [more ... support News]
10:24:22 AM
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OPML editor available today. Dave Winer's new OPML editor is scheduled to be available for download today. Files and support will be here. I've signed up for the newbie list on Yahoo Groups. I'm not sure how or if I'll incorporate it into my work or play, but it's sure to be much talked of on the net so I want to give it a spin and see what it's all about. I've mentioned here before that I am conflicted about outlines, just generally. I'm both drawn to them and repelled by them. I never did say much about why... [learnandteachonline.com]
10:19:34 AM
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Sunday, July 24, 2005
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 The intro.
"The OPML Editor follows in the tradition of simple text-based tools masquerading as a rich development platform. Or is it the other way around? The most powerful applications are also the most powerful development platforms. The various text editors on Unix. Quark XPress on the Macintosh. Notepad on Windows. Inside every text editor is the potential of platform, and every platform must have a simple text editor. It was with this simple premise that I set out in 1988 to make an outliner that was also a programming language and object database. Now, in 2005, all the power of this idea is available in a download that's about the size of a 15 minute podcast. If this works, people with great ideas should arrive shortly. Maybe you're one of them? If so -- I've been waiting for you!" [Scripting News]
11:16:53 PM
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© Copyright 2005 Bill Brandon.
Last update: 10/8/2005; 1:26:10 PM.
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