• Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Topic: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Hi!

I recently downloaded MarsEdit 2 and instantly fell in love with it's simplicity and aesthetics. However, today I cannot use it -- which really makes me sad and a tad bit desperate.
I'm one of those individuals who use Textpattern as my blogging plattform, which generally is a smooth experience. These days Textpattern sports a XML-RPC API, which supports most of the Metablog and MovabeType API -- which for the most part is quite enough.

There are some issues, though.

1. With MarsEdit a Textpattern section is interpreted as a discrete blog (Blog ID). However, MarsEdit still displays all entries in the entries list no matter what section they belong to.

2. TextPattern has optional input fields (up to ten, I think), which you can name and use for whatever you want. It would be nice it MarsEdit could allow you to enter data for those fields as well.

These two grudges I can live with. I quite understand that MarsEdit couldn't possibly cater for every need. The following is crucial:

3. There is no way to specify a slug for a Textpattern blog. There is a field for a URI-title in Textpattern, where you may enter a slug of your choice, or allow Textpattern to auto-generate one for you. One would think that the slug field in MarsEdit would let you enter a URI-title, but if you do it never reaches the Textpatten database. This means you could only use MarsEdit if you use blog-URIs with entry-IDs in them (/section/ID). If you prefer a more modern approach and want usable URIs of the type /section/date/slug you can't link to your entries. If Textpattern doesn't have a slug in its database the links fail.

I think all this is due to the Textpattern XML-RPC API lacking proper hooks, but I do wish Daniel could perhaps open up a dialogue with the team behind Textpattern and sort this out. I really want to use MarsEdit, and I suspect many other Textpattern users want that too.

I've posted this issue on the Textpattern forum as well.

/Joakim

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Could I really be the only one interested in this? I won't believe it. ;-)

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Hi Joakim - sorry I neglected to answer sooner. I've been traveling and ... frankly ... this is a "hard one" because I don't have all the answers at my fingertips smile

I was sort of hoping some of the other TextPattern users would chime in with some suggestions, but maybe next week when I'm back in my office I can do some testing against TextPattern to get a better idea of how things are supposed to work and how well MarsEdit can be made to work with it.

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • murk
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  • Registered: October 08, 2007
  • Posts: 1

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

I just heard about MarsEdit on the MacBreak Weekly podcast. I immediately came to the site and did a search for Textpattern and , after finding only three posts on Textpattern, it appears support is spotty and the developer (Daniel) may not think there is much demand for TXP.

I want to add my vote for Textpattern support. The MarsEdit app looks like a winner and I'm a Textpattern user who would love a simpler interface for posting. I just don't want to pay for a new app AND then jump through hoops to make it work. Make it simple for me and I'd gladly pay.

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Hi Murk - thanks for the vote. I wonder - did you try using MarsEdit with Textpattern. My understanding is that it works but there is little support for some of the more advanced features. I still haven't gotten a chance to do extensive testing on my own, but I hope to get to that soon.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

So, Daniel -- have you had a chance to do some testing yet? I really want to be able to use MarsEdit. So much.

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Hi Joakim - the good news is I have finally installed an up-to-date test system for TextPattern, so I should be able to follow up better no some of these questions.

Let's focus on the "slug" issue first of all, because it is the most critical to you. I tested this against my TP install and discovered that TP is not respecting the "mt_basename" attribute of a post that I send it from MarsEdit.

Since TP implements the MovableType API, it would make sense for them to respect this attribute the same way MovableType and TypePad do.

Do you have a suggestion for where I should initiate contact with the TP team?

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

I would start at the official Textpattern forum. If you register, the forum "Development" emerges as a link on the front page. I've tried to get their attention regarding this issue, but have had no luck. Hopefully a developer like yourself is more successful.

There is a contact page as well.

I really can't thank you enough for spending time and energy on this!

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Hi Joakim - I posted this:

http://forum.textpattern.com/viewtopic. … 16#p160816

Hopefully that will help get some more discussion started.

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

I lost my patience with the Textpattern dev team and decided to have a look at the Textpattern source code myself. I'm no great PHP programmer, but solving the slug issue was a simple matter of adding two lines of code. I'll upload the hacked file in question to my web page and post a link here soon.

A quick note regarding issue no. 1 (in the first post of this thread) -- I can't see a reason for this in the Textpattern source code. Might this be an issue at the MarsEdit end?

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Regarding issue 1 - if sections are split up by blog ID in Textpattern, then MarsEdit requesting the posts for a specific blog ID should not return all the posts, right?

I would expect you would add a separate "blog" in MarsEdit for each of the blogID you are interested in managing.

D

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

I would expect you would add a separate "blog" in MarsEdit for each of the blogID you are interested in managing.

I've done exactly that. I've set up a number of blogs, where each blogID corresponds to a Textpattern section. However, all articles are listed for every MarsEdit blog -- not just the entries with the corresponding blogID/section.

I don't think I'm the only one experiencing this -- I have a distinct recollection of having read something about this elsewhere on this forum.

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Well anyway my point is that if MarsEdit is asking for all the posts of a given blog ID (which you can confirm by examining the Network Log), then it's Textpattern's responsibility to only include those corresponding posts in the response.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Fair enough. When I look at the Textpattern source code it appears the Textpattern devs would like you to use the method mt_getRecentPostTitles
instead of metaWeblog.getRecentPosts
(I've set my blog software to "Movable Type").

The former supports different blogID, but not the latter.

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

metaWeblog.getRecentPosts does provide the blog ID, though.  So you should be able to examine the request (the first parameter is the blog ID) and if the Textpattern is not limiting the results to only that blog ID, it's a bug in Textpattern.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

It does provide the blogID allright, but apparently Textpatterns implementation of metaWeblog.getRecentPosts doesn't use it (although mt_getRecentPostTitles does). Sadly I'm not able to work around this and I doubt any Textpattern dev is going to help out any time soon. Clearly this is a shortcoming of Textpattern, not MarsEdit.

This is very sad indeed. For me and every Textpattern user out there.

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

I can only hope that Textpattern will get a volunteer who takes seriously the XMLRPC support.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

I contacted the developer of the current XML-RPC for Textpattern (Pedro Palazon) and he promissed to look it over during the upcoming holidays. I keep my fingers crossed.

Will you ever consider adding Textpattern as a "blog software" alternative when you set up a blog? I don't know if this really acomplishes anything more than a "warm-and-fuzzy-feeling" for Txp-users, but still.

Thank you for your time.

/Joakim

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

At some point I will probably revise the list of options available.  But so far there don't seem to be that many people using Textpattern, compared to other systems.

Of course, some of the systems listed are also quite old by now and have relatively few users now, too. Eventuallly I'll probably change the popup so it shows the big popular ones, and then a bunch (including Textpattern) in a submenu Other ->

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: January 04, 2008
  • Posts: 2

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

hey joakim, just curious what was your 2-line fix for the slug issue? i'd like to bring it to the attention of the devs (mind you none of them actually maintain the xml-rpc plugin as it was developed by someone not on the team anymore).

i noticed daniel mentioning that pedro would look into it which is good news. but his 'real job' means that hes a little slow on response time in terms of TXP-related stuff.

i do not use marsedit or have any need for xml-rpc support, but the TXP community is great and i'd like to take a shot at bringing its support up to par. as a blogging platform it has definitely fallen behind in features/development compared to the likes of wordpress. but as a CMS theres just no comparison.

  • Registered: September 18, 2007
  • Posts: 20

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Hi, iblastoff!

Great news! I've sent you an email requesting your email address. I'll then send you my hacked version of the TextPattern XML-RPC server.

/Joakim

  • Registered: January 04, 2008
  • Posts: 2

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Unfortunately I'm not a mac user so I can't test with MarsEdit but i've been using w.bloggar for winXP and I *think* I fixed this issue (which also happens in w.bloggar):

---
1. With MarsEdit a Textpattern section is interpreted as a discrete blog (Blog ID). However, MarsEdit still displays all entries in the entries list no matter what section they belong to.
---

The 'fix' I implemented doesn't make sense to me but it seems to have resolved the issue (at least for w.bloggar) and I can now retrieve the latest posts by blogid/section.

Joakim I emailed you the files I altered. Let me know if it works for you as well.

Last edited by iblastoff (January 05, 2008 09:48:17 PM)

  • From: Brisbane, Australia
  • Registered: April 05, 2007
  • Posts: 16

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Wow, any chance I could get a hold of the fixed XML RPC files?

ncaldwell's Website

  • From: Brisbane, Australia
  • Registered: April 05, 2007
  • Posts: 16

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Beep?

ncaldwell's Website

  • From: Somerville, MA
  • Registered: January 27, 2005
  • Posts: 3,390

Re: MarsEdit and Textpattern, not exactly ebony and ivory...

Maybe you can try emailing him? Does the email link show up for you?

Daniel Jalkut's Website