I’ve had more progress with BlogMan 🙂 I was stuck on a few problems since I’d started with the Blog code but changed the data table names for BlogMan and certain errors were popping up that I couldn’t trace at first :p I’ve finally got through all the errors, fixed most of the code and have gotten user information retrieval working. Now, you can retrieve information for any user on your blog as long as you know their login and password. This way, you can even retrieve posts by users other than yourself. I started with some Delphi code which emulated the Blogger API but I’ve discovered that Blogger API calls are not strictly adhered to by some of the other blogging apps or that they support a superset of the Blogger API and so, I am in the process of creating a metablog API library which can carry out the same API call for different blogging tools *and* take care of the differences in the way the API calls are implemented as well. So far, I’ve done user information retrieval and post retrieval and even there, I have to modify post retrieval to work completely with Movable Type.
Blogger only has a content value for a post where as Movable Type has extra text, summary, title and I forget what else. I’ll probably have to modify the interface as well so that all the extra text areas appear as tabbed parts of the main edit window. Hmm … maybe I should make the preview window a part of the tab set too? That’s actually a good idea even for Blog since then you don’t have to keep on hitting the toggle preview button or right-click and refresh each time you make a change to your entry. I’ll have to look into that. But first, I need to get post retrieval working right and then posting, publishing and deleting entries. Once all that works, I can start using BlogMan and from then on, all I’ll really need to do is spruce up things for releasing :p
Incidentally, somebody pointed out in a comment (they didn’t leave their name :p) that Bloggar (I think that’s the name of the tool) already does what BlogMan is attempting to do. I downloaded Bloggar yesterday but didn’t work too much with it but I do like the interface and it seems to support a heck of a lot of blogging tools than I had even imagined existed :p But I don’t know if it supports downloading posts on to your desktop and keeping the posts there for backup – which is the main reason for BlogMan. I want the functionality of Blog with the easy accessibility from anywhere of a server-based solution. Plus, I am used to the Blog interface and would rather work with it (however clunky it might be :p) than a new app. Of course, the final reason is that I can add any feature I want instead of relying on somebody else to do it when they have the time :p Whatever the case might be, I’m continuing with BlogMan so there! <vbg>
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