As promised, I’ve uploaded a new Ubuntu package to the PPA that is compatible with Ubuntu 10.04. This package doesn’t have any new features, but does remove the dependency on the python-gnome2-extras package that was removed in Lucid.

The new package hasn’t been extensively tested, so file a bug report if there are any installation bugs.

UPDATE (6/14/10): A minor bug slipped in with the last update, so there’s a new package available on the PPA. It should be posted within the next few hours.

Here’s a quick update on the state of BloGTK.

Lucid Packages: Sorry for the delay in packaging. I will have packages for Ubuntu 10.04 on the PPA up shortly. I will post an announcement here when they are available.

The new packages should eliminate the errors about the python-gnome2-extras package not being available. Ubuntu changed their packaging of certain GNOME libraries, and the new BloGTK packages will work with the changes to Ubuntu.

WebKit and BloGTK: BloGTK 2.0 uses the pywebkitgtk library to embed WebKit in the application. This library has caused many problems and is no longer in active development. So this means that the WebKit rendering code will have to be rewritten – and there’s a lot of code. The good news is that using PyGI introspection should give BloGTK closer access to the latest and greatest WebKit features. The bad news is that it may take some time to get it all working. Hopefully the change will be straightforward and BloGTK can leave behind all the bugginess.

Future Releases: The current plan is to move BloGTK 2.1 into being a largely under-the-hood release. The focus of that version will be on moving to WebKit introspection instead of pywebkitgtk and fixing bugs. Other features I want to implement are better error handling (with a GUI telling users how to turn on XML-RPC for WordPress), and better internationalization support.

After that, there will be a major feature release. BloGTK will move to WYSIWYG editing, with the optional code view still available. Image support will happen – either uploading the image to your blog or using Flickr/Picasa. There will be other cool stuff too. Thankfully, some of this code has been written, so it won’t be too difficult to implement.

BloGTK 1.x (2003-2010), RIP: The 1.0 series of BloGTK is not going to be developed further. Getting BloGTK 2.1 pushed out to all the major distros will be a priority. BloGTK 1.x had a much longer life than I would have expected. Thousands of people have used it, and it’s done better than I could have hoped. But it’s not worth maintaining anymore now that BloGTK 2.0 has taken off.

Thanks to everyone who has supported BloGTK – it’s appreciated! The upcoming architectural changes should remove one of the more frustrating roadblocks to making BloGTK what I always wanted it to be, and will hopefully lead to another major leap in open-source blogging.

Development on BloGTK 2.1 has been at a virtual standstill for a while, partially because I’ve been short on time and partially because there’s been a nasty segfault bug that kept cropping up whenever I tried to get the prototype WSIWYG editing system to work.

Now, lo and behold, it looks like that bug is no longer present, at least as of the latest version of Karmic. I’m performing more tests to confirm that the bug has been wiped out, but it looks like the crashes with the WSIWYG system aren’t happening any more.

If the segfault bug is gone, that will mean less time trying to trace that annoying crash and more time working on the next iteration of BloGTK.

With luck, BloGTK 2.1 will have WSIWYG editing; support for image uploads to your blogging system, Flickr, or Picasa; and some under the hood fixes as well.

Thanks to everyone who has submitted bug reports lately — I always appreciate the feedback.

Here’s what’s happening in the world of BloGTK:

First, thanks to all who have contributed patches, bug reports, and feedback in 2009. Bringing BloGTK back from the dead was a great experience, and it’s good to know that it’s appreciated.

The next release of BloGTK will be 2.0.1, which will mainly be a bugfix release with some added spit and polish. Again, keep submitting those bug reports so that any outstanding bugs with 2.0 can be squashed.

Next up is 2.1. I want 2.1 to be an awesome release, but right now there’s a huge roadblock. The WebKit library that BloGTK uses loves to segfault. This bug is a showstopper for BloGTK. There may be ways of working around it, but all of them are kludgy and generally uncool.

So, if there are any experts in writing Python bindings out there who can take a look at this bug and offer a patch, that would be extremely helpful. Right now, that bug is keeping 2.1 development from truly moving forward, and I’d hate for this project to be stalled out over technical issues once more.

More news as development continues.

Ubuntu blog OMG! UBUNTU! has a nice review of BloGTK with some great constructive criticism.

For example, they note that the buttons on the editor toolbar can be difficult to understand. 2.0.1 will feature tooltips for all the buttons to make them easier to figure out. Plus, the insert link icon will be the system standard icon.

The review also notes two feature requests: WYSIWYG editing and Blogger tags. WYSIWYG editing is being experimented with for 2.1, and Blogger tags will come once Ubuntu updates the python-gdata library to support them. Hopefully both will be coming soon.

Thanks to OMG! UBUNTU! for the nice review.

Work is continuing on adding support for image uploads with BloGTK. In addition to the Picasa support mentioned earlier, work has begun on native uploads for blogging systems that support the metaWeblog.newMediaObject method. So far, the preliminary code is working well, although there’s a lot of work to be done to make sure it works right.

The next version (tentatively 2.1) will also hopefully be much better with error handling. Right now, when something throws an error, it’s not easy to diagnose just what happened. The next version should do better, not only giving you a better warning of errors, but also creating an error log that can be used to diagnose problems.

BloGTK is continuing to evolve, and I’m getting more and more assistance in making it better. Again, thank you to everyone who has contributed code and bug reports and feature suggestions. Every little bit helps.

Happy Thanksgiving to those BloGTK users in the US of A!

BloGTK 2.0 is steadily being refined, so if you’ve installed from the PPA you’ll get some crucial bug fixes next time you update your system. If you’ve installed from the tarball, there’s an updated download you can install that fixes some critical bugs in Fedora and other distributions.

There’s also some very exciting stuff that’s coming down the road for the next version of BloGTK 2.0. Thanks to a new BloGTK contributor, there’s a patch out there that adds support for Picasa uploads right from BloGTK. Just insert a local image on your computer and hit the upload version, and the new patch will automatically upload your images to Picasa, change the links over, and post your blog entry. It’s a completely seamless experience.

Image uploading is just one feature planned for the future of BloGTK. There are other great new features coming that will make BloGTK even better. Keep checking back here for more news as development pushes forward.

<professor>Good news, everybody!</professor>

It appears that the infamous segfault bug in Karmic has been vanquished, and BloGTK 2.0 no longer tends to fall down and go boom when editing posts. Apparently the WebKit view does NOT want to die, and will decide to take down the entire app if you try. This behavior is more than a little strange, but thankfully there’s a workaround that appears to kill the bug.

The trunk branch on Launchpad has the fix. Hopefully this will fix some other bugs on other platforms.

At this stage, once the fix is confirmed not to cause massive breakage, there will be a point release (2.0.1) with the fix.

From here on out, the next step will be squashing additional bugs, making sure that i18n will work out, and then planning for some new features.

As always, please keep sending bug reports and ideas my way.

For those of you using BloGTK 2.0 on Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic, you’ve probably noticed a few problems with crashes. Like, a lot of crashes.

From what I’ve been able to tell, BloGTK will crash when more than two windows have been opened. Why, I’ve no idea. My guess is that there’s some garbage collection problems that are causing problems. Whether that’s due to something in BloGTK itself or the underlying Python libraries isn’t known yet. Given that BloGTK works just fine on Jaunty, my guess is that there’s a bug with one of the libraries.

A bug report has already been added to the Launchpad project. If anyone has a better idea of where the problem may be, please post the information either in the bug report or on this blog.

I apologize for the problem, and hopefully the bug will be fixed as Karmic heads towards formal release.

UPDATE: It appears that the crash is related to the WebKit bindings. Investigation into this bug is continuing.

UPDATE – Sept 24: Some more digging has revealed that the crash happens when one editor window is closed and then another is opened. There is a bug report filed with the pywebkitgtk package that seems to deal with a similar issue, if not the same one. I will continue to see if there’s anything I can do with the BloGTK codebase to prevent the crashes.

I apologize for the problems, and hopefully this issue will be resolved before Karmic is formally released next month.

UPDATE: Nov. 5: Still testing this crash on Karmic. I’m hoping to be able to either find a fix or a workaround shortly. Thank you for your patience.

Also, keep the bug reports coming—there are definitely outstanding issues that need to get fixed with the 2.0 codebase, and the more that get squashed, the better BloGTK 2.0 will be.

At long last, BloGTK 2.0 is here and ready for download. BloGTK 2.0 is a major step up from prior versions, and features a completely new codebase and tons of modern features.

Getting BloGTK 2.0

Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty

If you’re running Jaunty, using BloGTK 2.0 is a snap. You can install BloGTK 2.0 from my Personal Package Archive. Just follow the instructions under the “Read about installing” link to get going. Then, you may use Synaptic to install the new version.

BloGTK 2.0 will first uninstall previous versions of BloGTK before installing. Your individual configuration files will remain, however, and if you wish to downgrade, you’ll be able to. (Why you would want to is beyond me, though.) Unfortunately, your old configuration won’t transfer over, but BloGTK makes it much easier to get up and running than before.

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic

Packages for Karmic are now available in the BloGTK PPA. Be sure to select Ubuntu 9.10 in the drop-down box before entering the repository information.

Other Linux Distributions

If you’re running something other than Ubuntu, then you’ll need to install from source. To do that, go here to get the archive. Download the tar.gz file to a temporary folder and unpack it.

In the Terminal, go to the folder where BloGTK has been unpacked, and type:

sudo make install

BloGTK will then be installed.

BloGTK 2.0 has been very heavily tested, but it is possible that there are bugs, and there will be updates to deal with them. If you notice a bug with BloGTK, please file a bug report so those bugs can be squashed.

But most importantly, have fun using BloGTK 2.0!