July 30, 2001

Since I’m working on the News Reader (more on that in a bit), I decided to release Blog 3.0 today after all 🙂 This release is basically lots of minor bug fixes and a few things to make sure that standards are adhered to (meaning that I messed up in the first place :p) The biggest change is probably the inclusion of a per site option to specify the extension you want used for the archived entry files. This means that there was another database change and you will need to download the Data Conversion Utility again (even if you were running Blog 3.0 Beta 1) and run it before you run Blog 3.0. Of course that part applies only to existing Blog users. So go get it, use it and let me know what else I’ve broken <vbg>

I have been looking into the whole XML/RSS/RDF file deal and have been discovering some stuff which is positive but also stuff which is negative 🙂 The positive point is that I did find a way to get around the whole Open XML component issue but the bad news is that most of the backend news files that I can find seem not to be totally XML compliant and so the codes keeps on choking on the files 🙁 I guess I will either have to abandon the backend news reader idea and simply go with a newsgroup reader or try another tack … Sometimes when you keep on banging your head against a stone wall, the blood gushing over your eyes makes it hard for you to see clearly :p

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Posted by Fahim at 4:17 pm  |  No Comments

Well, I wrote to Evan Williams and told him that I was willing to put any acknowlegement/disclaimer that he wanted in the Blog docs but that I didn’t want to change the name. Haven’t heard from him yet in response to that. Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.

I’ve been looking into XML parsing since Saturday evening for the enhancements that I am planning for Gossip. The bad news is that I found that the latest version of the Open Source Open XML component chokes on backend RSS files that it used to parse without a problem in prior versions 🙁 Hmm … wonder what’s up with that? I guess I’ll just have to figure out a different approach this time … but that always takes time. Ah well, can’t always have an app working a week after you conceive it I guess :p

Oh yeah, because of Tyran Ormond’s invaluable input most of the known bugs in Blog 3.0 Beta 1 have been eradicated and it seems to be pretty stable. I am contemplating whether to declare this Blog 3.0 final and be done with it or to add some further features requested by a few users. The jury’s still out on the verdict <g> but you should probably know sometime today.

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Posted by Fahim at 10:19 am  |  No Comments