This is precisely why we need new XML-RPC/MT clients for OS X!
OK, so I was just writing an entry about a new XML-RPC”:http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mtmanual_programmatic.html#xmlrpc%20api client (for “MT”:http://www.movabletype.org/) and when I submitted it, it got eaten by “EspressoBlog for no apparent reason. I wanted to scream! And I can’t write my entries in any other program and copy-and-paste because, for some moronic reason, none of the available MT clients support copy-and-paste! It’s absurd! We need new XMLRPC clients!
Especially since now I can’t get EspressoBlog to respond, and I’m forced to write this entry in BBEdit and paste it into my web browser. Not so cool.
All right, .
One of the benefits of this is that Phil Ulrich”:http://blog.philulrich.net/, the guy who wrote EspressoBlog, is working on a new client, called “Userspace”:http://blog.philulrich.com/permanentpages/software/userspace/. It sounds as though it will fix all of my gripes about EspressoBlog (the UI is hideous and hangs whenever I’m posting even though I think it’s multithreaded) and about all of the competing clients. After all, “Kung-Log”:http://kung-foo.tv/kunglog.php is badly designed too, takes up an ungodly amount of (precious, on a PowerBook) vertical screen space and the idiocy of having transparency turned on by default drives me mad. To boot, “NetNewsWire”:http://www.ranchero.com/netnewswire/ looked promising because “Brent Simmons is absolutely brilliant, but as it turns out NNW’s blog-posting window is ugly as all sin and lacks a few features I like (like the ability to set certain options in posting). Not acceptable.
So thank you, Phil Ulrich, for giving me hope about a new XML-RPC client for MT. I was resigned after using NNW, because if Brent Simmons can’t do it who can? I’m heartened now. OS X needs a really good XML-RPC client, badly. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for your work.
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(1) Unfortunately, EspressoBlog was not multithreaded. This was a very poor oversight on my part, and I had actually considered playing with threads before I realized it would just be loosely joining another small piece to a series of already loosely joined small pieces.
(2) Yes, the UI wasn’t fabulous. I got rid of the Sherlockiness, to put it as best as I can. The new look is back to using tabs to divide up different steps in writing an entry, and doesn’t involve resizing the window 8 million times - and, it can be resized at will. The AquaHIG is my new friend.
(3) Ironically, Brent Simmons wrote the XML-RPC code behind Userspace. You should see a marked speed improvement, and not just because of multithreading, which it now takes advantage of.
(4) Copy/paste at will, as far as I know. :)
I hope Userspace meets your expectations, and I hope to have a version that can post to (at least) Movable Type out before WWDC.
— Phil Ulrich Jun 29, 11:30 AM #