Re: filestat - a different perspective

On Fri, 20 Aug 2004 11:16:09 -0600, Lee Joramo <[email protected]> wrote:

> Over the last nine months I have been toying with various blogging
> systems and I keep coming back to pyblosxom. I like the information
> architecture of blosxom sites, and python is my preferred language. I
> also like the portability of blosxom-style sites, both in moving
> between servers, and between blosxom implementations. The basic file
> format and is plain text, and we can easily move between various
> blosxom implementations.
> 
> To me, blosxom-style sites have two weakness. First is the lack of
> storing of meta data, especially permanent timestamps, but also
> information like authorship, draft/publish status, keywords, etc.
> Secondly, in the lack of good web based editing tools. However,
> directly adding meta data and web based editing will cause pyblosxom to
> diverge too much from the original blosxom, and there are complex
> issues that affect performance and make caching more difficult.

Very interesting post.

I too wold like a more structured approach to entries, and would like
a better "CMS" approach to the blogs.  It's also clear that blosxom &
derivatives get a lot of traction because of their easy hackability,
which more 'sophisticated' systems like MT lose pretty quickly.  It's
been a "problem" at the back of my head, and I think your idea is an
elegant way to solve it.

I'm not convinced that the segration between *blosxom and NewProject
is that simple, however -- e.g. adding a draft/published status and
making it work w/ pyblosxom is something that (as far as I've been
able to figure out) needs to impact both the format of the entries and
the processing of entries.  Maybe it's ok to say that NewProject
"embeds" PyBlosxom, somewhat like Plone effectively embeds Zope.

Thus NewProject could come with e.g. a "through-the-web" configuration
mode which resulted in writing out a config.py.

While I agree that interoperability of flavours w/ the Perl blosxom is
a neat feature, it's not really a 'deep' feature -- the variable names
aren't going to stay the same, the plugins aren't at all API
compatible, the configuration mechanisms are different, etc.  Any
not-plain-vanilla (which is different than 'flavoured' ;-) site won't
transition that well.

All in all, a very interesting idea.

--david


-------------------------------------------------------
SF.Net email is sponsored by Shop4tech.com-Lowest price on Blank Media
100pk Sonic DVD-R 4x for only $29 -100pk Sonic DVD+R for only $33
Save 50% off Retail on Ink & Toner - Free Shipping and Free Gift.
http://www.shop4tech.com/z/Inkjet_Cartridges/9_108_r285