On May 4, 2002 at 14:16, Jym Dyer wrote:
Not to discourage anyone from creative repurposing of MHonArc,
but weblog tools being better suited to weblog tasks than
non-weblog tools, ...
=v= Well, a weblog is essentially a bunch of messages that are
attractively displayed on a web page. The best way to compose
messages is with mail tools (and Usenet news tools), which have
been developed and constantly refined for decades, are the #1
use of the Internet for most people, and of which there are a
variety to choose from, many of which are user-customizable.
Part of the problem is that people fail to see that the underlying
protocols can be used for different types of interfaces. Nothing
prevented the weblog stuff to be based upong mail/news formats.
... the connectivity requirements of sending the XML-RPC
message are in line with the requirements of sending an email.
Connectivity is different, and orthogonal, to the data itself
being transmitted. For example HTTP is different than SMTP, but
both basically use RFC822/MIME for formatting the data.
=v= This sounds great, but why haven't we seen it in action? I
was able to slam together a blog, customized to look exactly the
way I like it, within 2 hours of downloading MHonArc. It took
just 1 hour to write that hacky script to make a "blog-style"
page of ephemeral messages.
From what I see from the XML-RPC API, it appears to not be rich in
data representation as is with email (MIME). This could be
a limitation of whoever designed the API.
=v= Since my underlying mail user system is MH itself, I have a
*lot* of control over what ends up in the blog, and I don't have
to use third-party software with a bunch of privacy-invasion
features. ;^\
Plus, you can direct the same message to multiple different
locations.
The whole weblog-style interface definitely is useful to many
(since many use it), but I would have started from day one with
a MIME-based underlying format for the messages. The XML-RPC stuff
gives no additional representation sematics than MIME and also
introduces a new format that requires a new set of software to
support it.
--ewh
