Lean blogging with iA Writer + TxtRacer Combo

2011-07-12

TxtRacer is a lightweight .txt-based blog and lexicon system that I coded. It is the holder of my way of explicit thinking, the lexiblog.

Since iA Writer for Mac, blogging with TxtRacer has never been easier for me. Here's how and why.

HOW: iA Writer + TxtRacer

Here is my work flow for blogging:

Write the text in iA Writer, using MarkDown. Save it as sth. like speaking-name.txt.
Upload the text and pictures via Transmit to the web server under a directory like 2011/07.

Done.

View it in the browser, as TxtRacer renders it automatically. It's already on the web under konnexus.net/2011/07/speaking-name and per default on the homepage and rss feed.

Preview

Done? What about a preview? What about correcting typos etc. Well: name the file with a "_" in the beginning. Then it won't appear in any search etc. But the url still will work. If you're the only one who knows the file name, only you will see the blog post. Of course, you can share the url with your reviewers. Voilà - the preview.

Editing

Doubleclick in Transmit will open the file so you can edit typos and save. Needless to say that the saved version is already online. That's the correction process.

WHY: Experience with Wordpress

A few weeks ago I witnessed @iA_Chris publishing an article on Wordpress. At one point I started to wonder how much time you spend to fill the gap between the written text and the actual publishing. I saw Chris doing:

Formatting, especially writing HTML for custom styled text and images
Pasting pictures into the media library, then copying the urls by hand and pasting them into self-written HTML tags
Previewing, going back to HTML, resizing the editing form field again and again.

Don't get me wrong. Chris is one of the blessed people who can write and code in an efficient and effective way. He knows how to operate WP by heart. So I asked myself: if even Chris spends hours, how much do others spend?

I know, TxtRacer is geeky and won't ever be mainstream or even have a community. Still, it makes my life easier at times.

Room for improvement

Actually the lean blogging process could be even simpler.

As I want to have manual control over my home page articles, I have a "home_content" file and paste the urls in there. Then it appears on the homepage and in the feed. Of course this could easily be replaced by some script that just shows the newest articles. I just wanted to have full control over it. So I removed this step of the general blogging process.
I would love to have dropbox doing the FTP-upload and sync thing. Dropbox just does not have an API for that. Sadly.

Comments:

Tobias am 2011-07-13

Are you shure there is no way for Dropbox+FTP?

But anyway, I don't see the advantage of Dropbox over the Transmit-Disc-Feature…

The thing I like about WP: Even though the image-handling is crappy (dialogues and stuff…) it crops the images automatically which is something I would not want to do. Also for a multi user environment there is no easier tool (mulit-user, review, revisions,…).

Konstantin am 2011-07-13

Tobias, you're perfectly right when it comes to multi-user usage. TxtRacer is not prepared for that at all. And the image cropping: It would not be a big thing to add on some script that does it for me. I just did not want to have more code than I actually need. But yes, for fast blogging image cropping is quite handy.

ben_ am 2011-07-13

@Konstantin: Ahm … the things Chris does in Wordpress sound to me as if you're not doing them, because your layout, the concept of your Site is less complex. That's not an advance of the Software, but of the Site you run with …

@Tobias: I tried the Transmit-Disc-Mount-Feature for a while. But it has mayor flaws compared to Dropbox.

When mounting the remote Disc for longer periods, the server cuts the connection and Transmit is often not amused about that, resulting in a Sat1-Ball for Ages.
You have to be online.
The files are not really on your Computer. Searching through all of them is hard, not to speak about search+replace (which is a common operation for file-centered Systems).

@Last: Hell … I still find my self wondering, wether txt-files might be better for me too … hoped these thoughts would stop after a while. :)

Konstantin am 2011-07-13

@ben_: Your first argument: yes and no. Actually chris handles the same kind of formatting as I do. Images of different size and some extra text highlighting. I implemented some handles for myself, so i can write image-name.jpg#xl to have a big picture, or image-name.jpg#s to have a small one. So it seems more efficient to me.

Konstantin am 2011-07-13

@ben_ And about .txt files - I still find it amazing how you manage to write every article in HTML. But I know, I told you a hundred times already.

fym am 2011-07-13

Same process for me, except I a) do use a script for my frontpage/index listings and b) have a separate folder for drafts (content therein won't show up in searches, archive, frontpage ect). So instead of renaming files I have to move them (that is: if I use the draft-functionality), which I guess takes a wee bit longer

Since I wrote my system after I saw Heimweh and TxtRacer I think my CMS is a bit of both of your concepts. Most of the time I use txt-files like Konstantin, but I can use either full HTML-Files (like ben_ does) or HTML-"Includes" (= *.html but the content within is only used for the node's text body as to always keep with the most current theme.

I feel like my process now is several times faster than when I used WP or Drupal. But mainly I love that with the use of a txt/html system the focus of this whole blog thing now lies where it should.

ben_ am 2011-07-13

Yeah. Fym is totally right! The central advance of our new systems is not the speed or the leanness of the code, but the new focus. We work with Documents instead of Spreadsheets.

ben_ am 2011-07-13

Ah. And, Konstantin, about 90% of my blogposts are post-by-mail currently. So only very few HTML left to do for me. :)

Wolfgang am 2011-09-23

here are "my two cents":

first I realy like the upload-everything-you-need-for-one-post-concept. This is something I will do too in my coming aproach of a lightweight blogging system.

The only thing I don't like is manipulation images by hand. I would like to upload one base image and do some default cropping by script. I like this approach in drupal (src="imagename/scriptparam").

I'm getting realy nervous, when I think about ist :)

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