I have finally released activeRenderer vs 1.4.
The new version packs 3 new features:
To access the outline browser after installing or updating to version 1.4, click on the activeRenderer link in the Status Center section of Radio's local Home page, or in Radio's Tools page.
You may type a remote (http://) or local (file://) URL to an RSS news feed or OPML outline, click browse, and display the result in the viewer pane.
If you have the mySubscriptions.opml option checked in your Radio preferences, you may click tnews to display a list of your currently subscribed RSS feeds in the right pane. Clicking a feed in the list will display its outlined content in the viewer pane.
Clicking outlines will list the content of your www/outlines folder in the right pane, in outlined form of course. Clicking an outline name will display the OPML file in the viewer pane.
There are several parameters to the rendering that you may modify by clicking settings, then save. For instance, checking create headers will modify the outlining of news posts so that a header node (the first sentence) is created for each post under the title node, the rest of the post being rendered as a child node of the header, recreating my favorite title/header/story hierarchy. More on parameters, and accessing the rendering engine later.
The outline browser is a simple browser. It is not a full featured outliner: no modifying or re-ordering the nodes. Neither is it a full news aggregator: no marking of previously read posts, no archiving of previous posts. Wouldn't be too difficult to create an aggregator from this interface though...
I've run into unexpected problems when readying the next 2.1.1 minor update of activeRenderer: I'm overhauling the installation / uninstallation process to go along with the newly implemented outlining styles for weblog categories, and it's an even worse nightmare than I thought it would be :-)
I should have finished the testing by Friday though, Murphy willing...
[image] [image] This week's featured publisher, Gerald Gleason, doesn't use Radio Userland to publish his weblog. He doesn't use Movable Type either. Yet, look at the navigation lighthouse that forms the left side of the page: you'll recognize a familiar outline structure, with a nautical twist :-)
[image] Gerald has put activeRenderer's javascript code to work, and produced wonderful looking 'nautical' replacements for the 'standard' outline wedges.
[image] With his authorisation, I'll soon include those picts as part of a 'nautical' style for outline wedges. Alternate sets of wedges with specific styles are scheduled to show up in the next 2.2 version of activeRenderer.
There are currently 3 mailing lists / Yahoo groups devoted to the activeRenderer Radio tool, quite a lot really :-)
I didn't realize until Monday that Gwénaël - can't think of a worst firstname to type into an HTML editor, Gwénaël :-), went through the trouble of translating all of activeRenderer's documentation into French.
Wow, that certainly took some work, I'm really grateful, and so should all French, Canadian and Belgian activeUsers. I didn't find any Swiss in activeRenderer's registration database :-)
Auf Deutsch Übersetzer herzlich willkommen... Apply within.
[image] Philip Cubeta's Wealth Bondage self styled online bordello is packed with interesting links neatly origanized in no less than 3 activeRolls.
I wish I had half of Phil's imagination and writing talent. Wealth Bondage is currently the number 2 source of referrals to the activeRenderer site. I apologize to all WB visitors: the techy stuff you find here must feel pretty boring :-)
This is a major release, with the beginning of our journey down the non-English publishing road, the first two steps being support for accented characters encoded with 'iso-latin-1', 'utf-8' or 'macintosh' sets, and a host of new macro parameters so that default English mentions on the HTML rendered pages may be replaced by other languages equivalents.
Next step involves the full localization of activeRenderer: Gwénaël is still working on it, it's a painstakingly long task, but I'm confident he will succeed eventually.
aR 2.1 also comes with an updated outlined aggregator view, and a host of bug corrections: to all patient bug reporters, thank you kindly.
Details are available in the ar-announce mailing list.