Firedrop2: The Python Blog Client
- Firedrop2
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- Entries
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Making an EntryNew Entries and Markup Introduction
Firedrop2 produces HTML pages as its output. Writing entries in
HTML would be very tedious, but it's an option if you want to. You can also choose from four different text markups to make your entries in : These allow you to make entries using plain text, that are converted into nice looking HTML automatically. Note Sextile is a lightweight markup that Hans Nowak created especially for Firedrop2. It is inspired by Textile, but even easier to use. My favourite markup is ReST, because it is also simple - and allows things like footnotes and these funky note boxes. New Entry First open your blog. Then click on the "New" icon, or press Ctrl-N, or select "New" from the "Entry" menu. All of these will create a new entry. A Create New Entry dialog will pop up (the image above is from Firedrop running on Mac OS X). This generates some metadata for your entry, and then inserts it all into the entry window after your press the OK button. Note If you want to mark an entry as temporary, and not include it in the output when you hit Build, uncheck the Publish checkbox. Markup You can choose to create your entry in one of the following markups:
Title Choose a title for your entry. You can edit it later if needed. Body You can enter some initial content for your entry. You can edit it later if needed. That's ItNo, really, that's it.  Once you press the OK button in the Create New Entry dialog, the metadata will be copied into the entry pane in the GUI. At the top of your new entry you will see the metadata, i.e. details about the entry. These end with a separator --, which you should not alter in any way. You can (but don't need to) edit the metadata by hand. The first two lines of your entry after the separator line are special. The first line is your title, which you entered in the Create New Entry dialog. This becomes the entry.title special value in your entry template. The second line determines which markup you are making your entry in; you also chose this in the Create New Entry dialog. This line will contain either one character or none. Don't edit this line or add whitespace to it.
Well.. one more thing: if you want, you can now click on "Categories" to select which categories this entry is in. Below the markup character is the content of your entry. You can now edit it as desired. Publishing Your SiteWhen you've made your new entry, hit the "Build" button and Firedrop2 will produce the HTML output of your blog. You can also use the Publish menu, in which case you'll have two choices: Build New, which only produces HTML files for entries that have changed (this is the "Build" button's behaviour), and Build All, which forces Firedrop2 to create new HTML files for all of your entries regardless of whether they've changed or not; this is useful if, for instance, you've recently applied a new theme, in which case your page templates will have changed. If you want to have images in your blog entries, or file attachments, make the necessary edits and put your images in an 'images' folder below your output directory, and your file attachments in a similar 'files' folder. You can then use the "Preview" button to open your site in the default web-browser. If you don't like what you see, you can use the "Purge" command in the Build menu to delete the generated HTML files (not your original entries!) {sm;:-) and start again. If you have set up the FTP options, then you can use the "Upload" button to transfer your blog to your server. By default, only changed files will be uploaded. Your images and file attachments will be automatically uploaded as well, if you used the folder names specified above. The One-Click button will build and upload your site in one go. Note that it will rebuild all your entries to ensure that your site is up-to-date. MacrosIn order to further customise your entries you can use macros. These need setting up, but allow you to include any of the following things in your blog :
You can also define your own macros using simple Python code. PluginsAs well as all the standard features, you can extend Firedrop2 using Plugins. Standard plugins (included in the distribution) include a spell-checker, an entry emailer, and themes, in addition to a couple of others. The Plugin Documentation covers using these plugins, and writing your own. There is also a plugin called InteractiveGUI which is an invaluable tool when hacking on Firedrop2, including writing your own plugins. It lets you interactively investigate the internals of Firedrop2. Hint If you are a non-native English speaker, you may be interested in the alternative sets of dictionaries available for FireSpell. You can find these at : http://lingucomponent.openoffice.org/spell_dic.html. The dictionary file needs to go in the myspell folder in your PyEnchant distribution. On Windows this would typically be at C:\Python24\Lib\site-packages\enchant\share\enchant\myspell (or similar). On Mac OS X, you'll find it at ~/Library/Application Support/Enchant/. On Linux, you should find it at /usr/lib/python2.4/site-packages/enchant. The FutureFiredrop2 has more underneath the hood than just being a blog tool. It can also manage sets of documents called itemlists and articlecollections. Much of the code in Firedrop2 has been reused in rest2web. rest2web is a tool for auto-generating websites and parts of websites. At some point Firedrop2 will be extended to become a GUI front-end to rest2web. For a list of other ways that Firedrop2 may be improved, including bugs that need fixing, see the TODO Page. Return to Top |
Having configured Firedrop2, and set up your templates, you
are ready to start making your blog entries.
