Scripting News: Doing a new build of the OPML Editor

Scripting News, the weblog started in 1997 that bootstrapped the blogging revolution.

Doing a new build of the OPML Editor

The next stop on my tour of development projects is to ship some new software that runs inside the OPML Editor. The software is designed to run on a Mac Mini that's attached to a big screen HD-TV. So the way the OPML Editor boots up now is inappropriate for this application. It presents a dialog and opens a weblog editing window. Instead this app interfaces through a web browser, and runs in the background.

So I need to come up with a way to not run the startup code for the weblog editor. I'll be taking my notes here, so that later when I want to do the same thing for another project I'll know how to do it. And since the OPML Editor is open source, the notes can apply to other people's projects if they want to do something similar.

1. How do you create a plain text file using the software Apple ships with the Mac OS? The TextEdit app doesn't have that option, amazingly. I found one very ugly way to do it. Open a .txt file. Then the options on the Save dialog give you a way to save as plain text. The real answer: It's a preference.

2. The OPML Editor will have an opmlStartupCommands.txt file in the application folder. The first line will set user.prefs.flStartupDotOpml to false. dotOpmlThread.script watches for this, and if it's present and set false, it won't start up.

3. Add this to the to-do list. I need to get Bonjour working inside the OPML Editor, with the minimum of fuss.

Last update: Thursday, June 3, 2010; 4:01:55 PM

~About the Author~

Dave Winer, 55, is a visiting scholar at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. He pioneered the development of weblogs, syndication (RSS), podcasting, outlining, and web content management software; former contributing editor at Wired Magazine, research fellow at Harvard Law School, entrepreneur, and investor in web media companies. A native New Yorker, he received a Master's in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin, a Bachelor's in Mathematics from Tulane University and currently lives in New York City.

"The protoblogger." - NY Times.

"The father of modern-day content distribution." - PC World.

One of BusinessWeek's 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

"Helped popularize blogging, podcasting and RSS." - Time.

"The father of blogging and RSS." - BBC.

"RSS was born in 1997 out of the confluence of Dave Winer's 'Really Simple Syndication' technology, used to push out blog updates, and Netscape's 'Rich Site Summary', which allowed users to create custom Netscape home pages with regularly updated data flows." - Tim O'Reilly.

Mail: scriptingnews1mail at gmail dot com.

Sep Nov