Forums : Feedback Forum

Hey guys,

I find the concept of journal amazing. Being able to post updates quickly and efficiently through an IM client is great.

However, I feel a bit powerless with it. I thought of its RSS feed to be a great way to post newsbits to our project's website. However, most RSS readers will display it in an unreadable fashion. Putting entire post content in the title is ... well ... making the whole concept useless to me ;)

It would be great if we could use an additional formatting tag to separate title from content, perhaps even a newline tag.

I am fully aware that this isn't meant to be a full-featured journal/blogging system, and that it's meant just for small updates. But, it has a potential to become just a bit more serious and useful with this new feature.

So, would it be possible for you to introduce a new tag that would allow us to separate title from content, at least in RSS feeds?

While at it, you might add an edit journal function so we can edit old posts accordingly ;)

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Greetings Ivan,

The CakePHP folks have had good luck with the journal as is. One challenge of the title concept is that I'd like the journal to be very Instant-Messenger friendly - which brings up some issues since instant messages don't have titles.

I'm happy to entertain any specific design you'd suggest - could you get more specific?

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

Woah, has it already been 28 days since I posted that? Tempus fugit I suppose ;)

Yes, I like the journal too. Sadly, I'd very much prefer if I could also add the title (not being forced). This would permit me to use it as primary source for publishing various news; I don't find it hard to insert new tag if it would allow my feed to look much much better on most readers. (See how it looks in a google gadget I dug out for YATC's homepage.) Currently, it's impossible and impractical to write anything longer in the journal, and the concept seems to be expandable beyond Twitter :)

I'd design it as follows:

1. title \n text \n text (most clients support punching in newline)
2. an option Force journal with titles

Force journal with titles would, in case it's activated, alter the current behavior to:

1. if title is specified, set the title to whatever is specified
2. if title is not specified, set it to ivucica's post on

Perhaps another option could be available and turned on by default: Disable journal titles, in order to prevent someone with posting \n and being surprised with titles being turned on.

These are just thoughts; hope this could help. I really like writing posts from IM which I have turned on at all times, anyway, and being able to make real posts would simply rock.

Thanks for responding!

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Would love this feature, my RSS reader puts the entire post in bold because that's what it does with the title, it hurts the eyes.

Eddie Ringle over 16 years ago

Ok - I'm warming up to this new title feature. Thanks for instigating this discussion. My feedback on your ideas:

i. Using one \n as the title delimiter: I fear some journal users might get surprised here. I would prefer something more specific, like: 2 newlines (\n\n), or 2 colons (::), or ...?

ii. I generally dislike options - I think I'd prefer to keep it really simple and turn titles on for everyone, which means that:

i. If a title is provided, use it

ii. If no title, using ivucica's post on would be fine for the project's journal rss, but would be annoying on ivucica's journal rss (every post would have this). Instead, why not just pick the first few words with an ellipsis. Example:

Shipped a new version...
Shipped a new version of foobar that support grouping and ordering.

Yea? Nay?

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

Hi,

1. Yes, \n\n would be cool. Perhaps even double-colon would be cool since that way everyone (even those who are not aware of CTRL+ENTER in most client) would be able to send titles. On the other hand, double-colon might cause problems for C++ coders (NameOfClass::Member, right?) So the delimiter has to be carefully chosen. I think that \n\n would be best.
2. You may be right, too much options and the whole thing gets too confusing. I like the proposal with auto-summary: first few words might be good for project's journal too, but with added prefix of username, e.g.: ivucica: Shippd a new version...
3. I'd just point out that existing journal entries perhaps shouldn't be patched to avoid buggy RSS clients. I'd definitely give a small button for upgrading existing journal entries, and keep it there for a month, for those who want to set up their journal to have same formatting through its entire lifetime. After that time period the button can go away.

You Ohloh guys rock! I wish you all best in life, especially with this service.

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Why not surround the text which you wish to be the title with a certain character? For example, title

Eddie Ringle over 16 years ago

I don't have a strong preference. The '==' scheme would be slightly easier to type in IM than \n\n. Anyone else wanna pipe in?

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

title sounds good to me too. If possible, you may want to support both schemes since that way it might be somewhat more readable for some people.

I also suggest that, while at it, you support \n's in message body :)

(It might be easy to forget since until now they were simply replaced by spaces)

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Jason, any updates? :)

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Hi Ivan,

I have a few things that must get done this week. I hope to get to this next week. Sorry bout the delay!

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

No problem -- take your time, it isn't that important, I just wanted to check up on how's it moving :)

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Any updates on this?

Eddie Ringle over 16 years ago

Ping!

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

It's been awhile. Hope they haven't forgotten about this. :\

Eddie Ringle over 16 years ago

Dearest Ohloh developers!

I am using this opportunity to perform an ancient technique I learned many years ago, during my meditation and training on the hills of my homeland. I am using this opportunity to poke you once again for status information on implementing separation of title from content in journals.

Any information on progress will be greatly appreciated.
Information on positive progress will be magnificently appreciated.

Thank you, Wise Ones!

:)

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Howdy y'all.

Your persistance pays off: I'm working on this right now.

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

Ok, here's my design blueprint. Feedback appreciated (and required quickly, before I code and ship this ;-).

1. Auto-RSS title truncation. If someone does NOT include a title in their journal message, I will use the first 40 characters as a pseudo-title (and add an ellipses ...).
2. The body of the RSS message will contain the entire message again (so the title will be repeated in the pseudo-title case).
3. The RSS title element will contain an attribute PSEUDO=true if the title was, in fact, 'pseudo-generated'. This is so that RSS consumers can know if the title is really different than the body.
4. The syntax for specifying a custom title will be like this: !title!. Therefore the first character of a journal entry will need to be a bang (!) followed by a bang after the title.

I think this covers it. More details as I uncover more.

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

Yep, I like those ideas. :)

Can't really add more, but as I have a Geometry essay to write I am not able to brainstorm at all. If I have any other ideas I'll post them here though.

Keep up the good work.

Eddie Ringle over 16 years ago

Master Kitty Approves This Patch

Thanks James! This sounds great!

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

K - I checked in the basic implementation today. Here are some release notes:

1. Had to change the title syntax to =this= (instead of !this!) - because jabber bot commands start with !.

2. RSS feeds now properly separate the title and contents. For journal messages that don't have a specific title I simply truncate the journal message and then repeat the entire message again in the content. If you want to know if the RSS title is actually a TRUE title (and not a truncated version of the content), I also now include a pseudo='TRUE' attribute to the title element IF it's just a truncation of the content.

Wheh! I'm sure I forgot something along the way - alert me if anything's weird. Thanks for the prodding on this - i think it's a good step forward for journaling.

Jason Allen over 16 years ago

Hi!

Thanks, it looks great! That leaves only one thing; it's somewhat unrelated, but I'll grab the chance to prod you on that one too.

I've broken nightly build system for glict

becomes

I%apos;ve broken nightly build system for glict
(% being &)

This happens in this RSS feed:
http://www.ohloh.net/p/yatc/messages.rss
It happens across several browsers.

Something wrong with HTML escaping routines? :)

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago

Hmm, and multiple lines don't seem to be working either. Or, have they ever worked? I have a habit of pressing enter when I feel my message should be organized as such. Any ideas on when this might be fixed?

Eddie Ringle over 16 years ago

Cheers,

another small thing; I tagged the post with YATC while in the title section, and it was spit out with the link included. Probably you should mop up any HTML before outputting the title section in RSS :)

So, I find only two bugs: HTML entities showing up in text that includes apostrophes, and HTML code in title where there shouldn't be any.

Otherwise, once again I'll say: this stuff works great and rocks :=]

Ivan Vučica over 16 years ago