Month: February 2003

Textile: as if you needed a reason to upgrade to MT 2.6x

Brad Choate: MT-Textile

_Textile is a ‘Humane Web Text Generator,’ created by Dean Allen of Textism. After seeing Textile in action, I decided that I must create a Movable Type plugin that does the same thing._

_I came to that decision before Movable Type 2.6 and the custom text filter thing were announced. In fact, seeing Textile spurred me to write to Ben about a way for MT users to have more text formatting choices and the option to select them on a per-entry basis. To my delight, he replied that “it’s already in the works.”_

can MovableType tidy up after its users?

The W3C MarkUp Validation Service

Welcome to the W3C MarkUp Validation Service; a free service that checks documents like HTML and XHTML for conformance to W3C Recommendations and other standards.

It would be useful if MovableType could generate well-formed XHTML code, even to the point of correcting user-entered stuff. The core functions of htmltidy have been factored into a library, so I wonder how hard it would be to have the MT::CMS stuff pass new posts to it and store what came back?

MT does a fine job of writing conformant code: it’s the user edits that are the problem. For example, for years I have always tagged in upper case, for readability: XHTML is case-sensitive, so that breaks validation at the HEADhead tag.

blogging in the stacks

Filters and Rogue Librarians: Weblogs in the Library World

Filters and Rogue Librarians:
Weblogs in the Library World

Abstract

Defines and discusses the history of weblogs, or “blogs.” Examines the creation of weblogs among libraries and librarians. Provides a framework for planning for a library-created weblog using a standard planning process, including needs assessment, budgeting and evaluation. Analyzes the possible uses of weblogs in a small special library.

via sean

too late

what’s in rebecca’s pocket?

It will not surprise you that I am opposed to a policy of empire-building. My view is simple: nations’ fortunes wax and wane, but empires fall.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn the US could already be called an empire. Consider:


  • it has airbases and naval bases in every corner of the world — does any other nation?

  • by doing so, it makes itself a target for many nationalist groups who need something to focus their adherents’ anger

  • its culture and ideas permeate the world, from TV to clothing to music. There’s no escaping it. Those opposed to it are not limited to religious fanatics, but include our allies in Europe and Asia.

Maybe a strict definition of empire requires puppet governments, but I’m not sure we need go that far.

shedding blood for sport

Well, it’s taken a while but I had my first bike accident today, unassisted as well. And of course, it would be on a factory new bike, rather than on the used bikes I have trundling around on the past two years.

I need to get used to this beast, that’s for sure. Between all the gearing (going from 2 levers to 4 that don’t necessarily go the way I expect) and toe-clips, going from a standstill into a serious hillclimb was an accident waiting to happen, and it did. I was in the street before I knew it, and I didn’t really have time to disengage my feet, so down I went, bike and all.

I ended up with a bruise and a scrape on my left elbow, a couple of holes in my knee (these I didn’t discover til I got home and Tegan called to me from the top of the stairs “why is your leg bleeding?”), and the imprint of the big chain ring in my right leg. And the left side of my Sora flightdeck controllers looks a little shopworn now.

The bathtub while I showered looked like a slaughterhouse floor, but everything got cleaned up.

So the bike is an amazing piece of work, very fast and responsive. I was able to get up to 20 mph on the flat without hitting the big chain ring, so that felt good. I’ve decided to skip riding to the trailhead and just take the bike over there: I didn’t do that before because I couldn’t easily get the front wheel off the old bike, but this one has a quick release. I don’t really want a lot of hill-climbing practice right now, anyway. Miles more than grades are what I need.

anyone remember OpenDoc?

quotidian

One-size-fits-all, one-app-is-all-you-need, one-api-and-damn-the-torpedoes has turned out to be an imperfect strategy for the long haul.

It sounds like he’s suggesting a component-based architecture:

OpenDoc is a cross-platform technology that replaces conventional applications with user-assembled groups of software components. OpenDoc allows users to create virtually any kind of custom software solution.

tidying up

Clean up your Web pages with HTML TIDY

When editing HTML it’s easy to make mistakes. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was a simple way to fix these mistakes automatically and tidy up sloppy editing into nicely layed out markup? Well now there is! Dave Raggett’s HTML TIDY is a free utility for doing just that. It also works great on the atrociously hard to read markup generated by specialized HTML editors and conversion tools, and can help you identify where you need to pay further attention on making your pages more accessible to people with disabilities.

So as part of my manifold duties, I have inherited a website that is in the midst of a makeover. I have some templates that look fine in IE for Windows, some skeletal style pages that don’t, and a lot of old content that needs to be migrated AND made 508 compliant.

What’s a lazy but resourceful geek to do? HTMLTidy to the rescue, of course. It’s taken me a few hours of monkeying around and reading, but I found a configfile incantation that seems to do what I want.


uppercase-tags: no # XHTML is case-sensitive
uppercase-attributes: no
indent: auto # made the output readable, ie “pretty-print” it
indent-spaces: 3
write-back: yes # write output to the same file used as input: risky but expedient
wrap: 0 # don’t wrap lines, since that confuses validators
output-xhtml: yes # write output as XHTML
doctype: auto # set the doctype to match the output

And just like that, my validation errors went from 50+ (with no content, mind you) to 0 and a clean bill of health.

Now to get some real work done.

don’t go there

sales dude: “so you want the Windows versions of those?”

me: “yes, unfortunately”

sales dude: “you want the ones that run circles around the others, then.”

me: “I don’t go in circles. I go forward.”

who said the browser war was over?

Mozilla upstart looks up to Safari | CNET News.com

“If you don’t like IE because you have religious issues with Microsoft, you think Netscape/Mozilla is too bloated and you object to paying for Opera, this might be for you,” said Michael Gartenberg, an analyst with Jupiter Research. “But that’s a pretty small marketplace.”

Four rendering engines, and an increasing number of browsers: sounds good to me.