• From: Frankfurt, Germany
  • Registered: January 10, 2008
  • Posts: 8

Topic: AtomPub

So now that the Atom Publishing Protocol has been an official IETF standard (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5023) for a couple of months, I'm wondering whether MarsEdit is going to get generic AtomPub support any time soon.

I'm planning to move off of Typepad and on to a custom-developed blog system, and was somewhat surprised to find that MarsEdit doesn't have any generic APP support -- despite using APP for Vox/Blogger (IIUC). I've been using MarsEdit since it was first released, and it's such an awesome application that I'd really hate to give it up. tongue

So, any news on this front? And in that context, on generic Basic/Digest authentication?
Oh, and if there's anything in development, need another beta tester? wink

Last edited by cmlenz (January 10, 2008 10:55:23 AM)

cmlenz's Website

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

Re: AtomPub

Basically support for generic AtomPub is definitely on the horizon, but it's been taking a back-seat to some other priorities. One of my hesitations in adding this support is there hasn't been a clear consensus on how additional blog features should be handled (above and beyond what is prescribed by AtomPub). SO I was hoping if I stalled a little bit, it would become clearer what I should do to handle some of this stuff smile

I've got a lot of stuff going on right now with MarsEdit, getting ready for 2.1 to ship relatively soon. So I don't want to make any concrete promises about when the generic AtomPub will be ready, but I'll probably start working on it after 2.1 ships, and will be glad to have you help test it in beta if you're still interested at that time!

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • From: Frankfurt, Germany
  • Registered: January 10, 2008
  • Posts: 8

Re: AtomPub

Sounds good, thanks for the response! In the meantime, I'll be looking for an alternative. Anyone have a suggestion?

cmlenz's Website

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

Re: AtomPub

I believe Ecto has support for AtomPub already in their latest betas:

http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/download/

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • From: Frankfurt, Germany
  • Registered: January 10, 2008
  • Posts: 8

Re: AtomPub

Yeah, I tried both Ecto and Flock, and unfortunately none of them worked. I guess the problem might be on my side, but they don't provide sufficient details about what's going wrong / what they expect, and my app works with APE and apexer, so… dunno.

Somewhat ironically, the best blog editing app I could find for Atompub right now is Microsofts Windows Live Writer. Bah tongue

cmlenz's Website

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

Re: AtomPub

The developer of Windows Live Writer is a really cool guy and it's no surprise to me that he's on the ball about having great AtomPub support. He is one of the active participants on the AtomPub discussion list. smile I'm somewhat less active, but trying to stay tuned in at least smile

As you have probably guessed, my attitude sort of leans toward "it's better to leave it out than to have it suck." So ... I tend to play it safe with stuff like this, and wait until I'm sure it will work well.

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • From: Frankfurt, Germany
  • Registered: January 10, 2008
  • Posts: 8

Re: AtomPub

Okay, here's a "wish I'd be using MarsEdit" badge as a motivator ;-)

  Notes on Writing a Blog Tool from Scratch

Actually I am still kind of using MarsEdit, but only for authoring, not for posting. Please let me know when you have some basic AtomPub stuff working that you'd like help with testing it.

cmlenz's Website

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

Re: AtomPub

Heh - that is cute smile I hope to get you on board with general AtomPub support soon. I will let you know when I have something private to test!

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: February 24, 2008
  • Posts: 1

Re: AtomPub

Hi Daniel - I've been writing my own blogging app and would also like to use AtomPub with my copy of MarsEdit instead of MetaWeblog. I thought I might be able to use the Blogger (New) support... but I see that it is tied down to how Google works (even though they handle most of their Blogger support via the Atom Publishing Protocol.)

Anyway, just another "me too!" post and if you are looking for someone to test an alpha or beta version of general APP support then I'd happy to do so.

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

Re: AtomPub

Thanks, soypunk.I'm hoping to get started on this soon, so I will let you know.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: July 20, 2008
  • Posts: 2

Re: AtomPub

I just wanted to add my vote for the continued development of AtomPub support.  I'm planning to add APP support to a couple homemade web apps at some point, and I'd definitely prefer to use a good OS X client rather than one of the existing command-line clients.

I am also happy to help out with any testing, whether using one of the server-side reference implementations (like Joe Gregorio's), WordPress, or some other implementation.

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

Re: AtomPub

I've made good progress on AtomPub support and I'm planning to include basic support for it in the 2.2 release of MarsEdit. I expect I'll get a lot of feedback from "real world" scenarios after the release goes live, and will hopefully then be able to quickly refine it in future updates.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • From: Frankfurt, Germany
  • Registered: January 10, 2008
  • Posts: 8

Re: AtomPub

Looks pretty good, thanks for the update smile

Two issues I've encountered so far:

1. XHTML posts seem to be displayed unescaped in the editor, and transmitted in CDATA sections, which I think is not exactly the idea behind the XHTML support in the Atom content model wink I.e. the XHTML markup should be part of the Atom XML document, not just a big blob of character data.

2. Also with the XHTML mode, I think the AtomPub spec demands special treatment of the wrapping <div> element:

If the value of "type" is "xhtml", the content of the Text construct MUST be a single XHTML div element [XHTML] and SHOULD be suitable for handling as XHTML. The XHTML div element itself MUST NOT be considered part of the content.

MarsEdit should strip off the <div> when retrieving a post, and tack it (back) on when transmitting, if I interpret the spec correctly.

3. There's an authentication dialog even when the APP interface is not protected (i.e. no HTTP 401 challenge). Trying to just dismiss the dialog by clicking Ok somewhat counter-intuitively cancels the retrieval without any message, so you need to enter bogus credentials that are then not used anyway.

Anyway, this update finally lets me use MarsEdit to write blog posts again, so thanks a lot!

cmlenz's Website

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

Re: AtomPub

Thanks for the feedback, cmlenz. And thanks again for your help during development phase.  I thought I was stripping the XHTML <div> as required. I'll look back into that.

As for the unescaping ... well yeah I guess I sort of didn't end up getting that entirely figured out before shipping smile Thanks for reminding me.

Great catch on the APP demanding credentials even if not needed. I'll get that fixed.

Daniel Jalkut's Website

  • Registered: August 02, 2010
  • Posts: 1

Re: AtomPub

WLW is one of the few things I miss about Windows. I'm currently playing with Ecto and MarsEdit; neither is as good, though they are both pretty good. I'm liking MarsEdit better because Ecto, despite having some nice features, has a pretty insane interface (I cannot figure out how to set up more than one blog in it; I'm completely flummoxed. They have "accounts" vs "blogs" and what this means is unclear, and if you go to their site for help is tells you to use the help built into the program; that produces a message that there's no help. They want money for this? I think not.)
Tried Scribefire after listening to a pretty positive review found by mp3 search , but hated it, and I am generally opposed to anything that forces me into a browser choice.
So yes, I wish someone would create something as good as WLW for Mac, I would happily pay for it.

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

Re: AtomPub

Hi Alonso - thanks stopping by. I am glad that you are finding MarsEdit at least has a fighting chance of serving your needs wink

I love a lot of things about Windows Live Writer, and do plan to continue improving MarsEdit over the months and years to come. I think MarsEdit currently does things both worse and better than WLW, so there is definitely a lot of room to grow and become undoubtedly superior to it.

Daniel

Daniel Jalkut's Website