README For BloGTK Weblog Client
Version 1.1

http://blogtk.sourceforge.net/

CONTENTS:
---------
1. ABOUT BLOGTK
2. SUPPORTED WEBLOGS
3. REQUIRED LIBRARIES
4. INSTALLATION
5. UPGRADING FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS
6. USING BLOGTK
   6.1 PROXY SUPPORT
   6.2 GENERAL PROGRAM OPTIONS
   6.3 ADVANCED BLOGGING
   6.3.1 TRACKBACK URL ENTRY
7. BLOGTK AND B2
8. CUSTOM TAGS
9. SPELL CHECKING
10. RELEASE NOTES
11. PROGRAM CREDITS

1. ABOUT BLOGTK:

BloGTK is a weblog posting client written in Python for any platform that 
supports Python and the GTK widget set. BloGTK allows you to connect to your 
weblog with XML-RPC and create new posts.

2. SUPPORTED WEBLOGS:

 - MovableType versions 2.5 or later.
 - Blogger and Blogspot
 - WordPress 1.5 or later
 - Any blog that uses the MetaWeblog API (such as Radio Userland or pMachine)

3. REQUIRED LIBRARIES:

BloGTK requires the following programs/libraries.

- Python 2.3 or higher
- PyGTK 2.0.0 or higher
- python-gnome2 2.00.00 or higher

- GTK 2.2 or higher
- GNOME 2.2

- glade-python 2.00.00 or higher

- aspell

BloGTK will run under other environments (such as KDE) so long as all the 
necessary libraries are installed.

4. INSTALLATION:

BloGTK needs to be installed as the root user.

Unpack and  install the BloGTK tarball using these commands:

   'tar -xjvf <packagename>.tar.bz2'

Switch to the newly created directory and type 'make install' as root and the 
Makefile will copy the files to the correct location in your system. You do not 
need to configure or compile BloGTK as it is written in interpreted Python code.

5. UPGRADING FROM PREVIOUS VERSIONS

The config file has changed between previous versions and this version. BloGTK 
0.7 or greater is *not* backwards compatible with prior versions. On running 
0.7 or greater your configuration file will automatically be upgraded, and your 
will no longer be able to use previous versions of BloGTK on the same user 
account. If you have problems with the upgrade process delete the file 
~/.BloGTK/BloGTK.conf and run BloGTK and a new config will be created for you.

This only applies if you are upgrading from a version of BloGTK less than 0.7.

6. USING BLOGTK:

When you first open BloGTK the program will open the configuration window and 
create a default account for you. There are three prompts, one for your server 
URL, one for your username, and one for your password. The last two are 
self-explanitory.

The server URL should be in this form: 
'http://www.yoursite.com/mt/mt-xmlrpc.cgi' (or 'http://www.blogger.com/api/RPC2'
 for Blogger users). If this address is incorrect, BloGTK displays an error 
message.

One the config file is written, BloGTK will always default to that default 
server. You can use the commands in the Accounts and Settings window to create, 
edit, and delete other accounts. To select an account other than the default, 
simply select the account in the Accounts and Settings window and click 'OK'. 
You can then use File/Connect to connect to the other account.

In order to post, first select the blog you wish to post to from the blog 
drop-down menu. From there the program will retrieve a list of categories for 
your post.

From there, just select your category, and enter your post's title and text. If 
you want the entry published, check the Publish option next to the post button. 
Press post, and it will send it to your weblog. If all goes well, you'll recieve 
a dialog box with the ID number of your post. If all does not go well, you may 
want to check the output from the console to see what went wrong.

To make a new post afterwards, select the 'File/New' menu command and enter your
 new post.

To edit or delete posts, use the option under the edit menu. In the drop down 
list will be your last ten posts by title (for MT and MetaWeblog) or Post ID 
(for Blogger.) Selecting edit will send your post to the main window where you 
can make changes. When your changes are finished, hit the post button and you 
will recieve a dialog box informing you that your post has been changed.

6.1 - PROXY SUPPORT:

BloGTK now has full support for HTTP Proxies. To use a proxy server, go to the 
accounts and settings window and click on the "Proxy Settings" tab.

Here you have three settings, either use no proxy, use your system default 
proxy, or specify your own proxy settings. Enter the host and port of your HTTP
proxy (if you use a proxy and do not know the address contact your system 
administrator or ISP) in the respective fields and BloGTK will automatically 
default to that proxy when communication with the server.

6.2 - GENERAL PROGRAM OPTIONS

BloGTK now has three new settings that can be used. The first allows you to 
control how many posts are retrieved when you open the edit/delete posts window. 
You can have anywhere from 1 to 50 posts displayed at a time in the window. 
(Default is 10 posts)

The second allows you to select whether or not you wish to have each new entry 
set to publish by default. Selecting this option will mean that you will no 
longer have to manually click the "Publish" checkbox for each new post. 
(Default is off)

The third controls what character set is used. For most Western European and 
Latin-based languages, you want this option deselected. If you are using UTF-8 
as the character set on your weblog (as many Taiwanese and East Asian bloggers 
do), then you want to enable this option. Disabling this option will ensure that
 text errors do not occur on blogs using ISO-8859-1 encoding (which most blogs 
do). (Default is off)

6.3 - ADVANCED BLOGGING

BloGTK now supports the use of several new fields, some of which are only 
available to Movable Type API-supporting systems. Metaweblog users can add 
extended entries as well as excerpts (provided their blogging system follows the
proper API). Movable Type users can use the extended entry fields, the excerpt 
field, as well as add keywords to their post, control Pings, Comments, and Line 
Breaks, as well as add TrackBack URLS.

6.3.1 - TRACKBACK URL ENTRY

You can provide more than one TrackBack URL to an entry by separating each item 
by a comma like this:

http://www.foo.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?2222, http://www.bar.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi?3362

Note that later MT systems will automatically discover trackback pings meaning 
that you don't need to manually enter them in this field. Most users will have 
no need to use the manual TrackBack entry unless they have ping discovery 
disabled.

7. BLOGTK AND B2:

If you use the b2 weblog system, you must use the Blogger option for your weblog 
system. However, b2 supports special tags for entering titles and categories for 
your posts. To enter a title and category for a b2 post enter the following in 
the body entry field:

<title>Your Post Title</title>
<category>ID # of Your Selected Category</category>

More information on b2 and the Blogger API can be found at 
http://www.cafelog.com/

(b2evolution and WordPress can use the MovableType API for full post 
title/category posting)

8. CUSTOM TAGS

Starting with version 0.6 BloGTK supports a system of unlimited custom tags. You 
can add, edit, and delete custom tag sets from the Edit/Edit Custom Tags menu 
option. You can insert any number of tags or character entities and have quick 
access to them from the toolbar. This is handy is you use custom CSS classes in 
your weblog entries, you use B2 and want to insert tags and categories easily, 
or if there are tags you use that BloGTK does not support. The custom tags are 
saved in the file: (Your Home Directory)/.BloGTK/tags.conf.

9. SPELL CHECKING

BloGTK now supports spell checking of posts using GNU aspell. You will need to 
have aspell installed on your system in order to use the spellcheck option. 
BloGTK also supports a custom dictionary for aspell. You can add words to this 
dictionary by clicking the (obviously enough) "Add To Dictionary" button in the 
spell check window. Right now deleting entries from your custom dictionary is 
not supported (this will be a feature in 0.9). If you mistakenly add a word to 
the custom dictionary you can clear the dictionary by typing 
'rm ~/.BloGTK/custom.dict' in a terminal window. BloGTK will then create a new 
custom dictionary for you.

In 0.96 you can now spellcheck the extended and excerpt entry fields. To
spellcheck these fields simply click on them and hit the spellcheck button.

10. RELEASE NOTES:

This is a now slightly-dulled-edge beta release. There are still rough edges to 
this program. The program works on my weblog, but there may still be bugs out 
there. Bug reports can be filed through the Sourceforge bug entry system at 
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=87493&atid=583336

Donations for this software would be greatly appreciated. This software is 
totally free, but sending a few bucks to jay@jayreding.com via PayPal would 
bring you good karma, and it'll also mean you'll get extra Developer Suck-Up 
Club support. Plus, it will ensure that I have enough caffeine to develop new 
versions. You can now also donate to the BloGTK project through the BloGTK 
homepage on Sourceforge.

This program was developed under Debian Linux and is released under the BSD 
license.

11. PROGRAM CREDITS:

Special thanks to James Henstridge for the excellent Python-GTK bindings and 
their equally excellent documentation.

Thanks to Ethan Zimmerman for his bug reports and the original BloGTK icon set.

Thanks to Michael Twomey for his HTTP proxy code patch.

Thanks to Kevin Conger for the scripting functions in the custom tags.

Thanks to Eugenia Loli-Queru for helping in making the BloGTK UI more usable.

Thanks to all BloGTK users for bug reports, feature requests, and their support 
of this application.