Michael Zajac’s Radio Weblog

2002-03-13 WED

Quotes and Dashes

While I’m at it, I have one more feature request. Nope: a bug-fix request.

I am right sick of copying and pasting into BBEdit, to convert text, for every single post.

Make the Mac server recognize posted high-ASCII characters like curly quotes, n-dashes and m-dashes. Come on, already! This has been basic Mac functionality since nineteen eighty fricking four. Please, please, please make the Mac version of Manila and Radio deal with these common typographic characters!

Wanna know how? Replace string.latinToMac with string.windowsToMac. 2:45:23 AM

Button, button. . .

Okay, I understand “Post” and “Post & Publish”. But what does the “Publish” button do? How can I publish without posting?

Looks like Michael Alderete has already asked this question. Sounds like Publish publishes the last posted version of the post. Sort of a ”ah, never mind” button.

Dangerous. The verb “Post” doesn’t sound destructive, but it loses the text you just typed.

There’s got to be a more self-evident arrangement of buttons.

Hm. These buttons are also confusing on a slightly higher level, (at least when it’s 2:30 am). They’re the same whether you are creating a new post or editing an existing one. Maybe they should have different text in different situations:

[Post] [Revert & Publish] [Post & Publish]

[Post Changes] [Revert & Publish] [Post & Publish]

2:36:42 AM

Satisfaction

Well, Dave granted one of my requests before I even thought of it myself. There is an itemTitle macro.

Time to update the Built-in Macros help page, Dave!

Heck, the Item Template only has one field on it. Why not put the docs right on the page? 2:20:25 AM

Titles?

Hm. I have to figure some stuff out. The title is added in front of my post on my own desktop home page, but it's missing from the public home page.

Feature request plus: Don’t put a period after my title! Why do you think I want a period?

Hm. Dave’s titles don’t have a period. Am I missing a template somewhere?

Ah. The periods are automatically added to the desktop website items. On the public website I can control the appearance using the Item Template. 2:09:19 AM

Titles!

Dave added a new feature to Radio. I now have fields in which I can type titles and links for each post. Even cooler: if I leave out the link, it makes it a permalink to this article.

Dave thinks this feature is finished.

Feature request: I would like the option to have missing links render as no link. This would save the confusion of some postings linking out of my site, and others linking to themselves. I'd rather have the permalink be a permalink icon than the title of the post. Man, he just stays ahead of me. That’s what the second checkbox on the pref page is for.

Another request: I want an <%itemTitle%> macro in my item template. That way I can put my title in an h4 tag. Dave already answered this request before I formulated it.

Request three: the edit form should be nicely formatted, with the items in a logical order. At least the title field should be above the item body text field. And why is there a bigger line space in front of the enclosure field?

No complaints, though. This rocks. 2:06:27 AM

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