Development on BloGTK 2.0 is nearing public release, but before BloGTK 2.0 is ready for primetime, it needs testers to put it through its paces. So, if you are feeling adventurous and want to give BloGTK a spin on your distro and blog, here is how to do it.

Getting Started

First of all, you will need the following packages for your system:

• bzr
• python (2.6.2 recommended. BloGTK is not Python 3 compatible.)
• python-gtk2
• python-gnome2
• python-gnome2-extras
• python-feedparser
• python-gdata
• python-webkit

On Ubuntu, you can add them all by going into a Terminal window and executing the command:

sudo apt-get install bzr python-gtk2 python-gnome2
python-gnome2-extras python-feedparser python-gdata python-webkit

On other distributions, follow the instructions for your particular distribution. (For RedHat-based systems, you should be able to replace “apt-get install” with “yum install”. Some distributions may have slightly different names for these packages (such as “python-webkitgtk” instead of “python-webkit”)

Once you have the required packages, you’ll be able to start testing BloGTK.

Getting the Code

The next step is to get the code for BloGTK from launchpad. Go to the directory where you want the BloGTK code to be located. Next, you will use Bazaar to get the actual code. In your Terminal window, execute the following command:

bzr branch lp:blogtk

Bazaar will then download the BloGTK code to a “blogtk” directory.

Right now, BloGTK is run from its own directory. When the program is ready, it will be installed for all users. For right now, you can install the development version without disturbing any older version of BloGTK on your system.

Using BloGTK

Go to the newly-created “blogtk” directory in your Terminal and execute the following command:

bin/blogtk2

BloGTK should open up and prompt you to configure your first blog account. From the configuration screen you should be able to add as many blog accounts as you wish. From there, you should be able to play with BloGTK to your heart’s content.

How to Create a Helpful Bug Report

The goal, of course, is to get as many people testing BloGTK as possible, and for them to find and help squash as many bugs as possible. To do that, I need bug reports. You can either submit a bug report through Launchpad or leave a bug report right here on the blog. (I would prefer bugs to be put into Launchpad, but will settle for blog comments.) Here are the things you should include to make your bug report helpful:

• Your Distribution (i.e. Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Arch, etc…)
• What Version of Your Distro? (i.e. Fedora 11, Ubuntu 9.04, etc…)
• What Blogging System? (i.e. WordPress 2.8, Movable Type 4, Blogger)
• What Error Did You Get? To find out what errors may have occurred, look both at any printed message in the Terminal window and any messages in the status bar of the application. If there’s an error message in the Terminal, try copying it into the bug report.
• What Were You Doing When You Got The Error? For instance, something like “I was editing a post on my Blogger blog in the editor, and then tried to insert a new blockquote by hitting the toolbar button, and then I got the error.” The more details, the better.

Again, the more bugs that can get squashed, the better. Also, if there’s a feature you want added in a future version, feel free to bring that up as well. However, at this point the focus of development will be on getting rid of bugs and fixing code before adding something new.

A hearty thank you in advance to everyone who helps in testing BloGTK. This program has taken a long time to develop, and I hope that the wait will have been worth it. Each bug report will help make BloGTK better.

UPDATE: Added python-gnome2-extras to the list of required packages.

UPDATE: Changed instructions to reflect the change to the folder structure in the newest revisions.

Since development on BloGTK 2.0 has restarted, there’s been a flurry of activity, which is pushing BloGTK towards a public beta release. There have been several fixes to the BloGTK backend, some new work on the interface, and some general tweaks along the way. For example, the current codebase now supports saving and opening posts to disk for offline editing. The new WebKit-powered preview system is working quite nicely, and was easy to implement.

However, there are some features that are likely to be left on the cutting-room floor (at least for the first release). For example, custom tags would be a nice feature, but isn’t something that is absolutely necessary for the first release. I would also like to have a much more refined offline blogging system in place. However, that will have to wait for a subsequent release,

It is likely that there will be a preliminary beta release in the near future. BloGTK 2.0 will be a quantum leap forward from the previous versions, with many new features and a much more convenient interface. Keep checking back here for more information leading up to the first public release of BloGTK 2.0.

To give you a look into the the future of BloGTK 2.0 and how it works, I’ve created this short screencast demonstrating how BloGTK works:

This screencast shows BloGTK 2.0′s new category selection system, some of it’s HTML tag insertion features, the new WebKit-powered preview system, and support for Blogger.

This is the first screencast that I’ve ever created, and not a bad effort for the first time out. As development continues, look for more screencasts showing even more of the application over time.

UPDATE: Apparently, YouTube was eating my screencasts, so I’ve uploaded this new copy.

I’m proud to announce that BloGTK 2.0 will now be using WebKit as its rendering engine for HTML content. WebKit is an ultra-fast rendering engine used in Apple’s Safari browser as well as Google’s Chrome browser. With the very nice and easy-to-use pywebkitgtk bindings, adding WebKit to BloGTK took almost no time at all.

What does this mean for you? For one, WebKit is a much better HTML rendering library than the old GTK html viewer. It’s much faster, much nicer, and is generally easier to use.

The other possibility is adding WSIWYG editing to BloGTK. I’m not sure that will appear in 2.0, just so I can get 2.0 out the door quicker, but it’s something that is now possible to add and have it work right. It’s definitely part of the road map for the next release after 2.0.

Development is continuing on BloGTK 2.0, and the addition of WebKit makes BloGTK 2.0 are much better blog editing platform than before. It will open up a whole bunch of new avenues for working with HTML in the application. It’s the sort of thing that makes a humble app programmer very happy…

The latest release in the old BloGTK codebase is now being hosted on Launchpad. This release fixes many outstanding bugs from 1.1 and includes new code to bring it up to date with new versions of Python and PyGTK. This version will likely be the last update to the old BloGTK codebase, as 2.0 is back in development.

Some of the fixes include a modern file chooser for opening and saving files, and improved security for saved passwords.

BloGTK may be tested by getting the code from the BloGTK 1.2 page on Launchpad. Don’t forget to file bug reports for any bugs you see.

Hopefully, BloGTK will be finalized and available for packaging shortly.

UPDATE: Preliminary Ubuntu packages can be found here.