Raven and most other desktop clients use the XML-RPC api on WordPress in order to publish posts as well as to download posts. The XML-RPC api is normally shipped enabled with WordPress version upto version 2.5.x.

Beginning with WordPress 2.6, the XML-RPC api is disabled by default. To use Raven with WordPress 2.6+, you must enable XML-RPC Remote Publishing via WP Administration Console.

1. Login to WordPress 2.6 Administration Console and goto Settings -> Writing.
2. Check the "XML-RPC" checkbox found under the Remote Publishing section. (see screen shot below).

You can find more information on this issue via RedSweater and the original WordPress Trac Ticket.

Labels: development, raven, wordpress, xml-rpc

As you know, Raven allows you to set the post date-time stamp to a future date time. In in previous versions, when you post an entry with a future date-time, the blog post URL (link location) is available (to Raven) as soon as you post it. Having the blog post URL is very useful - especially, if you want to view the post online, or refer to it (i.e. link to it) with in Raven in another post.

Recently, I noticed that Blogger no-longer returns the blog post URL if the post date-time is set for a future date (or if your PC clock date-time is faster than that of Blogger servers date-time).

According to Google's Blogger developers, this is "as designed" - i.e the post URL is not returned for posts with future date-time stamps. We do not agree with this design, but it is their design.

What we have done as a work around (with build 336), is that Raven will attempt to 'refetch' the blog post URL the next time you run "Download Recent Posts". Even in this case, the URL is available only if the blog posts' date-time is either 'now' or in the past - relative to the time you ran "Download Recent Posts".

Labels: blogger, development, issues, raven

The next beta release of Zoundry Raven will support the ability to install as a portable application (e.g. onto a flash or other portable drive). This is a feature that was requested by many users, and I'm happy to say that we have finally finished the initial support for it. In fact, I am composing this post using Raven2Go installed on a Memorex TravelDrive. It's a bit slow when compared to running off a hard drive (obviously) but it works pretty darn well!

The changes to Raven to support Raven2Go are, for the most part, hidden from users. There are a couple of things that I should mention, however. First, there is a new page in the Raven Installer. This custom installer page simply has a checkbox that can be checked if the user wants to install Raven as a portable application. If the checkbox is checked, then no application information will be saved to the registry. In addition, when Raven is run after being installed in this way, it will run in "Portable" mode.

The other relevant change for users when Raven is in "Portable" mode is where profiles are stored by default (and where the profiles.xml registry file is located). When in portable mode, Raven looks for a "profiles" directory in the install location. For instance, if you install Raven2Go to E:\TravelApps\Raven, then the profiles.xml file and the default location for newly created profiles will be E:\TravelApps\Raven\profiles.

Everything else that's different between Raven2Go and Raven is under the covers, so users shouldn't have to worry about it. For the most part, it simply means that where we used to refer to files in your profile using absolute paths, we will now use relative paths. This should allow you to take your portable drive to different machines (where the drive letter might be different) and everything should still work.

One thing to note for existing users - I would recommend doing a clean uninstall/install of Raven2Go if you have previously been using Raven on a portable device. The uninstall step will remove all of the stuff from the registry that Raven put in there (not much, but you clearly don't want it in there). Then the re-install will be clean (little/no registry entries).

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Labels: beta, command line options, development, portable, raven, raven2go, zoundry, zoundry raven raven2go portable

The Zoundry Raven application is based on a typical three pane view, with the bottom right view showing the summary of the current selection. For example, if the current selection is a blog post, then the post summary is displayed in the lower right pane. This pane exposes an extension point allowing one to contribute a view to it. ZM has created 4 extension point contributions to this, resulting in four difference 'views' of the post data.

The default is the standard Post Preview view.

On the top right of the Blog Post Summary, you will find a small 16x16 "window" icon. When you right click on this icon button, the context menu displays all of the available contributions (or views in this case).

The available views are - Post Preview, General Properties, Links (links found in the post), and Media (images referenced in the post).

General Properties

This view shows general properties about the post, such as the post title, date-time, and internal entry-id. If this post is published to multiple blogs, then the list of blogs is also shown in this summary view.

Links

This view displays all the links referenced within the post. You can right click on each link for other options.

Media

This view lists all of the image src URLs referenced in your post. Right click on the image URLs for options.

Labels: development, user-interface

Similar to adding your custom links, you can add your own weblog pings sites by contributing to extension point "zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.weblogping.site" (since there is no UI at this time).

1. Download the sample weblog plug-in zip file:
   sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.mypingsites.zip
   
2. Unzip it to Raven install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Zoundry Raven).
3. Restart Raven. You should now see a new weblog ping site (to Bitacoras.com).

This zip contains just one plug-in folder (for the plug-in XML file) with the plug-in containing one contribution (ping site) to the extension point "zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.weblogping.site". The zplugin.xml can be found in the plug-in folder

<install_dir>\system\plugins\sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.mypingsites

To add more, edit the plug-in.xml file and append additional <zoundry-extension> elements. The sample contains one <zoundry-extension> element (for Bitacoras.com) :

    <zoundry-extension point="zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.weblogping.site">
         <!-- id for Bitacoras -->
        <id>zoundry.blogapp.pubsystems.publishers.weblogping.site.bitacoras</id>
        <extension-data>
            <weblog-ping-site>
               <name>Bitacoras.com</name>
               <url>http://ping.bitacoras.com</url>
            </weblog-ping-site>
       </extension-data>
   </zoundry-extension>

Labels: development, how-to

One of the key features of the Raven blog editor is its extensibility via plug-ins. Some of the plug-in extension points are based on XML file configuration (i.e. no programing required) while others require programing. Some examples of the first category are blog sites/servers that appear on the New Account wizard, FTP based sites that appear on the New Media storage wizard, weblog ping sites and "quick links" that appear in the Link To right click context menu.

The current beta release does not provide a UI for the user to add his or her own list of quick link sites that appear in the context menu or even the tag sites that appear in the post publish settings dialog. How ever, if you are technically proficient in XML, here is way to "manually" add links and tag sites.

1. Download the sample link plug-in zip file:
   sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider.zip
2. Unzip it to Raven install directory (e.g. C:\Program Files\Zoundry Raven).
3. Restart Raven. You should now see some new links in the Link To menus.

   
   (Note: Displaying of simple links show above (Raven Blog, Zoundry etc.) will be available in the next release - build 226+).

   You will also see a new entry (Ice Rocket) in the Tag Sites tab in the publishing settings of the post as well as LinkTo->Tags menu.

   

   

The plug-in zip contains two folders, one for the plug-in xml and the other being the plug-in resources (icons). In this example, the plug-in id is sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider and the plug-in extension point contributions (zplugin.xml) can be found in the plug-in folder

<install_dir>\system\plugins\sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider

and associated icons are located in:

<install_dir>\system\resources\plugins\sample.zoundry.raven.blogapp.myquicklinksprovider

This sample has the following links (see zplugin.xml):

• Simple link to a web site (Raven Blog)
• Search link to Google Image Search
• Tag search at IceRocket.com
• Reference lookup at imdb.com

You can edit the sample zplugin.xml file to add your own links and tag sites. You can find more examples in the zoundry.raven.blogapp.simplelinkprovider plug-in (this is the default link provider plug-in that Raven ships with).

Labels: development, how-to, linking, tagging

One of the features of Raven is to allow you to manage multiple Profiles (in addition to multiple blogs within a Profile). A Raven Profile maintains all posts, tasks, indexes, account information etc. (basically all runtime information) in a single folder. Normally, most people would end up using a single profile. This default profile is normally stored in your Windows Application Data directory (e.g. C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Zoundry\Zoundry Raven\<Profile Name>).

Example of cases where you may want to use multiple profiles are:

• More than one user is sharing a single PC desktop. In this case, each user can have a Profile.
• You want to separate your personal blogs from other blogs (e.g. work/business).
• You are a professional writer/contributer and write for multiple clients/customers. In this case, you want to assign each of your clients a separate profile (you do not have to - but it keeps each of the customers/clients data separate).

At Zoundry, we also maintain multiples profiles - one of them being for the this Development Blog (and the Zoundry Blog) and the rest (a lot) being various "test" profiles. For example, some profiles contain 1 blog with a few posts, while others may have multiple blogs across various platforms with 1000s of posts. Another case is where some users have zipped their profile and emailed it to use for tracking down bugs.

Profile Manager:

This is the dialog you normally see on start up. It allows you to select the profile you want to open as well as create and delete Profiles.

Currently, this dialog is shown only during start up. You cannot switch profiles once you have launched the application. If you need to switch profiles, you need to exit the application and restart it. (This issue will be addressed in a later release).

Notice that this dialog has a "Don't show this dialog again" check box. Well, if you do check it, the dialog will not be shown and Raven will always launch with the last used Profile. Currently there is no way (with the current UI) for you to get to this dialog again (this will be resolved as well). If you must see this dialog, then the only option is to exit the application and modify a XML configuration file:

1. Open the profiles.xml file C:\Documents and Settings\<UserName>\Application Data\Zoundry\Zoundry Raven\profiles.xml .
2. Change the attribute named "bypass-dialog" (in the <profiles> element) value to "false".
   < profiles default-profile =" Raven Dev Blog " bypass-dialog =" false " >
   ......
   ......

Changing the Profile From The Command Line:

If you are launching Raven from a command line or a Windows shortcut file, you can provide the path to the profile using the "--profile" option. The syntax is:

--profile <full_path_to_profile>

We use this technique in our development environment (Eclipse) to allow us launch different test Profiles from Eclipse's Run menu.

Launching a Profile From The Desktop:

Using the --profile command line option it is possible for one to launch a Profile from a desktop shortcut. For example, I launch the Zoundry Development Blog profile directly from my desktop - bypassing the Profile Manager Dialog with its many profiles (in my case).

1. Create a shortcut to zRaven.exe on your Windows Desktop. The zRaven.exe executable file is normally found in C:\Program Files\Zoundry Raven\bin\ directory. To create a shortcut, right click on the zRaven.exe, drag and drop it to your desktop and choose Create Shortcuts Here option.
   
   
   
2. Next, you need to modify the shortcut's "Target" value by appending --profile and the path to your Profile. To do this, right click on the shortcut and choose the Properties option. From the shortcut's Properties dialog, select the Shortcut tab and append --profile [path-to-profile] to the Target value and press OK to save the changes
   
   
   
   For example, if the Profile is locate in the C:\Blog Profiles\RavenDevBlog directory, then the Target value should look like (not completely visible in the screen shot):
   
   "C:\Program Files\Zoundry Raven\bin\zRaven.exe" --profile "C:\Blog Profiles\RavenDevBlog"
   

Now, when you double click on the desktop shortcut, Raven will launch, bypassing the Profile Manager and using the Profile defined in the command line option.

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Labels: command line options, development, how-to