Python Liberation Front

Updated Mini How-To for Firedrop2

Firedrop Mini How-To Docs for New End Users (updated August 6, 2005)

You may want to listen to this podcast before working with the Mini How-To:

Firedrop2 Podcast

rss to subscibe to this podcast series

Vote for Python411 at PodcastAlley

These links below are indispensable aids:

Download wxPython

Download wax and Firedrop2

Fuzzyman's Plugins Tutorial

Hans Nowak's Firedrop2 Docs

python on technorati

Firedrop is a client side weblog creation and web content management system. It is open source and written in Python by Hans Nowak. It is cross platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and most Unix like systems. Fuzzyman has created a plugin creation tool and some nice plugins.

This Mini How-To is meant to take you step by step through the installation and first use of Firedrop. if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask them at the Discussion Forum

Installation and pre-requisistes: You must have installed Python, wxPython, and wax before you install firedrop2. See the links at the bottom of this document for the locations of these files. While firedrop should work with any recent version of Python, be sure you install the latest versions of wxPython and wax. At the time of this writing the latest version of wxPython is wxPythonOSX-2.6.1 nd the latest released wax is wax-0.2.68 and the latest version of firedrop2 is firedrop2-2005.9.

The wxPython, wax and firedrop2 folders must be placed in the Python site-packages folder. On Windows, this will probably b in C:\Python 23\Lib\site-packages. In Mac OS X, this will be in something like /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site-packages. Do not guess at this stage, these folders must be in the site-packages directory in order to work.

Wax is a Hans Nowak open source project that sits atop the cross platform wxPython and is used to write firedrop2's GUI front end. I have installed and used Firedrop2 on both Windows XP and on Mac OS X 10.4, and I see no reason why anyone should have any problems on any Linux or BSD system. On most systems, the wxPython, wax, and firedrop2 download should be in a zip or otherwise archived file that will be unpacked by your system tools more or less automatically, you just need to tell your machine which directory to put them into (site-packages). One other important point: the wax and firedrop 2 folders that you place in your site-packages directory must be named exactly that, wax and firedrop2. if the folders you unpack include version numbers, or anything else, you must rename them to simply wax and firedrop2, because the firedrop programs look for those folder names and will not work otherwise. Note that the firedrop2 folder will not work if it is called firedrop; it must be named firedrop2.

So, to summarize, install in this order, Python, then wxPython, then wax, then firedrop2; and make sure wxPython, wax, and firedrop2 are all in your site-packages directory.

Opening the firedrop GUI from the firedrop2 folder: Inside the firedrop2 folder that is now in your site-packages directory, you will find a few dozen python programs. The only one you must concern yourself with is the wxfiredrop.py program. Run this program, wxfiredrop.py, either from the command line or by double clicking on it in your file browser. This opens up the firedrop GUI that looks like this on MAC OS X:

Note that on Windows, the title bar that sits atop the whole Mac screen is integrated into the main firedrop2 GUI frame; this title bar includes the drop down menus " File, Edit, Format, Window, and Help". Below this you will find a row of buttons labeled "Open, New, Save, Build, Preview, Upload, and One-Click." Also, on Windows, the buttons will be rectangular instead of oval (pill-shaped) on the Mac.

Create a weblog or article collection folder: Now, using your system tools, create a new folder to hold your weblog or article collection. This folder can be anywhere you want it, just remember where you put it ;-))). let's say you create a new, empty folder called weblog in your desktop directory. Then, manually, create a new empty folder inside your weblog folder and name it weblog_html. This folder will be used to hold your actual weblog html files.

Now, on the firedrop2 title bar, click "File" and a drop down menu appears giving you a choice between "new site" and "open site". Click on "new site" and a dialog box opens. You must choose between creating an ArticleCollection or a Weblog. Let's say you chose "Weblog". Then you must choose a directory, and let's say you choose the new folder (directory) called "weblog" that you just created. Click OK and firedrop2 will fill-in your weblog folder with the files build.ini, build.py, page_template.html and entry_template.html.

Build.ini will look something like this:

output_dir="weblog_html"

archive_method = "d:7"

page_template = 'page_template.html'

entry_template = 'entry_template.html'

num_front_page = 20

frontpage_name = 'index.html'

root_url = 'http://www.awaretek.com/weblog/'

categories = ["philosophy", "general", "firedrop", "python", "poetry"]

title="AwareTek weblog"

description = ""

ftp_server = 'awaretek.com'

ftp_login = 'xxxxx%xxxxxxxxx.com'

ftp_port = 21

ftp_password = 'xxxxxx'

ftp_startdir = '/usr/local/apache/htdocs/weblog'

rss_filename = 'index.xml'

macro_filename = 'macros.py'

blogping = 0

You should open the file build.ini and fill in the root url of the website you will use for your Blog, as well as the categories you will use to order your posts (you can leave this blank for now, if you want), and the ftp information for firedrop's automatic uploader.py program to find your web site and login, including your site password. If you build an ArticleCollection, your build.ini will look very similar and you must add the same kind of information.

Now, if you look at the file page_template.html you will see the default setup for how your blog page will look. This can and should be customized by you to be whatever you want.

Your entry_template must be filled out appropriately.

I seem to find it easiest to learn by example ;-)))

here's a link to my my entry_template code

entrytemplate

Open Weblog: Now, using your firedrop GUI, click on the "Open" button. This will open up a file browser and you should navigate to the 'weblog" folder you recently created and that was populated with build.ini etc. by firedrop2. Upon accepting and choosing the "weblog" folder or directory, firedrop will "open" it, but it is still "empty" of any actual blog posts. The blog post titles, as you create them, will appear in the vertical rectangular window on the left; the actual post you are working on will be typed into the larger window on the right.

Create a New Post: Now, click on the "New" button. On the top of the blog post window, above the two -- dash lines, will appear two attributes, insert_date and modified_date. These two attributes are self explanatory. You can add any new attributes you want! This is one of the best features of Firedrop. For instance, most folks will want to create a categories attribute, and in fact you may recall that your build.ini already has a Python list called categories. If you add a string "poems' to your build.ini categories list, then you can add an expression categories="poems' above the two -- dashed lines in your blog post window.

Below the two -- dashed lines, you will see one line saying "New". Erase this line and insert instead your own Title of choice for this blog post. Let's say you choose "Hello World".

Now, for entering the main text of the blog post, you have two choices (actually more are available, but I am only going to cover two). First, you can just hit the return key twice and, starting on the second line below "Hello World" you can just type plain text. In this mode, you can also use HTMl tags, such as paragraph tags to set off separate paragraphs, and Some URL to set up web links.

The second alternative is to use Hans Nowak's sextile format. In order to do this, after typing in your blog post title "Hello World", immediately hit the return button and then type % below the "Hello World" title line, and then hit the return key twice (do not even hit the space bar after typing % before you hit the return key twice). Your blog post window should look like this:

insert_date='2004-01-31 15:38:48'
modified_date='2004-01-31 15:38:48'
--
Hello World
%

Main body of blog post text here...

I recommend using sextile, and I almost always do. The first difference you will notice (and appreciate) when using sextile is that you will not need to use the paragraph tags to offset paragraphs. Instead, you can just hit the return key twice to separate two paragraphs with a line of white space, just like you do in a normal text editor. You can still use regular html tags under sextile. There are many other features for ease of use in sextile and you are encouraged to read Han's docs on sextile on his web site. If sextile causes you any confusion, just go back to using plain text until you have furher studied sextile.

Whether you use sextile or not, you also will have available a powerful feature called "macros" to simplify the creation of blog posts. You are encouraged to read Hans' docs on Macros on his web site. Macros essentially allow you to define your own ease-of-use custom features.

Saving and Building and Uploading: Once your new post is as you want it, you click on the "Save" button and then on the "Build" button. You must click on these two buttons in the proper order, first "Save" and then "Build". "Save" saves a file of the form 00001.fd2 in your weblog folder. if you are saving your 100th post, the file saved will be 00100.fd2. When you click on the "Build" button, the program build.py (in your firedrop2 folder in your site-packages directory) will be run. build.py will use your build.ini file and will use the page_template.html file and the entry_template.html file to use your 00001.fd2 file to create an html file called index.html in your weblog_html folder. Recall that you created an empty folder called weblog_html and placed it in your weblog folder. This index.html file is your weblog. (If we had been creating an ArticleCollection, the process would have been the same but the file created by build.py would be given its own title.html name).

Now, you can click the "preview" button if you like to see what your blog post html (or your new article) will look like. Then you must click the "Upload" button to run the python script uploader.py, which uses the information you supplied to build.ini to log into your web site using ftp and upload the newly revised weblog (or new web article) to your web site.

There is also a button called "One Click" on the firedrop2 GUI, but I do not use it. One click will automatically do the whole sequence in order, save, then build, then upload. i find it safer and more helpful to do them one step at a time.

There is also a "Preview" button, that when clicked automatically opens up the created html file in your browser, in order for you to make sure it is as you want it before you upload it.

Since firedrop is open source and in Python, you can also do most of these things from the command line rather than from the GUI. Doing stuff from the command line is good because it helps you to see more of what goes on behind the scenes, and may give you ideas for future use.

On Windows XP, I have found everything to work perfectly. On Mac OS X 10.3, the only two features I have had trouble with are the "Preview" button, which I don't use any way (one can always click on the index.html file to open manually to preview); and the uploader.py script, which I think is a problem between my Mac and my website. At any rate, I use an ftp program manually from the command line to upload my files to my website.

However you have done it, now you have accomplished something!

Final Comments: There is of course a lot more you can do with Firedrop. Keep in min that tis is written in Python and is pen source, adn you can add features and customize two you hearts content. You can also explore the code and se how everything works. meanwhile, Hans is still coding away and adding features, so thing may change. keep is touch with his web log at http://www.zephyrfalcon.org/weblog/ fro future developments. And, if you have any questions about Firedrop or these docs, please ask them at http://pub38.ezboard.com/bawaretek

Important Links

Python411: Firedrop2 Podcast

Firedrop2 is a weblogging and content management system written in Python by Hans Nowak and supplemented by Fuzzyman with a plugin system. Open source and extensible in Python, Firedrop2 is good tool and a worthwhile learning exercise. This podcast helps you to install Firedrop2 and get started creating your blog.

Firedrop2 Podcast

rss to subscibe to this podcast series

Vote for Python411 at PodcastAlley

These links below are indispensable aids;

Firedrop2 Mini-How To Tutorial by me

Download wxPython

Download wax and Firedrop2

Fuzzyman's Plugins Tutorial

Hans Nowak's Firedrop2 Docs

python on technorati

Announcing Python411, a New Series of Podcasts about Python, Coming Real Soon Now

I am planning a series of Python411 podcasts dedicated 100% to Python. These podcasts will be most appropriate for newcomers and learners of Python or even those who haven't yet decided which language to learn next, or first. The series should begin with episodes such as an Introduction to Python, Why Python?, Comparison of Python to other languages, Python GUI toolsets, Python for Mobile Systems, and Python IDE's.

I will also likely include a podcast or two about Firedrop and how to set it up and use it for blogging, podcasting, or as a content management tool.

As I indicated above, this series will be named "Python411" and will be completely separate from my AwareTek series of Podcasts.

Firedrop 2005.8 has Plug-ins, and two Tutorials

Now that Hans Nowak has released Firedrop 2005.8, maybe it's time for me to issue a testimonial.

I have been using Firedrop since Christmas, 2003 and I have never had one problem. I run my whole sprawling web site on Firedrop. Although I have not even begun to explore its full capabilities, Firedrop is fully and easily customizable. The source code is clear and understandable, and everything is done in a Pythonic way, even the user interface (built with Hans' Wax on top of wxPython) feels like it was designed by Guido.

Now, Firedrop is being enhanced with Plug-ins. I can't wait to try them out, and I will as soon as I get home this weekend.

A nice fellow named Fuzzyman has written a Tutorial for how to create and use Plug-ins for Firedrop. So, I have unearthed an old tutorial (actually I call it a Mini How-To) that I created a year ago that takes you step by step through the process of setting up a Firedrop weblog from scratch. And, I have taken both my Mini How-To and Fuzzyman's Plug-in Tutorial and put them in my Python Tutorials page, where Firedrop now has its own section. How do you like that! ;-)))

I used to correspond (a year ago or so) with a few other Firedrop users, back when this web site had a discussion forum, but I had to discontinue the discussion forum due to the spam. I'd like to put up another discussion forum, or at least a comments facility on this blog, just as soon as I can find one that can be run without spam. In the meantime, I'd love to hear from anyone in the nascent but vibrant Firedrop Community, but you'll have to reach me by email at rdsteph@mac.com.

Really, Firedrop is a great tool, easy to use, expandable, and with an interesting future. Hans Nowak has also helped me immensely down through the last few years with his advice and hard work, and if you try out Firedrop ( or Wax) and like it, please give Hans a big thank you in any way you can. He's a great guy.

Firedrop Mini-Docs

I see that Hans Nowak has posted an exciting new version of Firedrop. So, I want to post this link to a set of mini-docs explaining how to set up a beginning weblog site with Firedrop, so that even this clueless one could make it work ;-)))

Congratulations, Hans and thank you! I can't wait to get back home tomorrow and start using the new version's built-in spell checker plugin. Eventually, I hope to add a plugin or two of my own invention...

Firedrop2 page_templates...and Please Contribute to the Discussion Forum (thoughts, not money ;-)))

Discussion Forum

Firedrop Mini How-To Docs for New End Users (updated August 6, 2005)

Firedrop is a client side weblog creation and web article collection content management system. It is open source and written in Python by Hans Nowak. It is cross platform and runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X and most Unix like systems.

This Mini How-To is meant to take you step by step through the installation and first use of Firedrop. if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask them at http://pub38.ezboard.com/bawaretek

Installation and pre-requisistes: You must have installed Python, wxPython, and wax before you install firedrop2. See the links at the bottom of this document for the locations of these files. While firedrop should work with any recent version of Python, be sure you install the latest versions of wxPython and wax. At the time of this writing the latest version of wxPython is wxPythonOSX-2.6.1 nd the latest released wax is wax-0.2.68 and the latest version of firedrop2 is firedrop2-2005.9.

The wxPython, wax and firedrop2 folders must be placed in the Python site-packages folder. On Windows, this will probably b in C:\Python 23\Lib\site-packages. In Mac OS X, this will be in something like /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.3/lib/python2.3/site-packages. Do not guess at this stage, these folders must be in the site-packages directory in order to work.

Wax is a Hans Nowak open source project that sits atop the cross platform wxPython and is used to write firedrop2's GUI front end. I have installed and used Firedrop2 on both Windows XP and on Mac OS X 10.4, and I see no reason why anyone should have any problems on any Linux or BSD system. On most systems, the wxPython, wax, and firedrop2 download should be in a zip or otherwise archived file that will be unpacked by your system tools more or less automatically, you just need to tell your machine which directory to put them into (site-packages). One other important point: the wax and firedrop 2 folders that you place in your site-packages directory must be named exactly that, wax and firedrop2. if the folders you unpack include version numbers, or anything else, you must rename them to simply wax and firedrop2, because the firedrop programs look for those folder names and will not work otherwise. Note that the firedrop2 folder will not work if it is called firedrop; it must be named firedrop2.

So, to summarize, install in this order, Python, then wxPython, then wax, then firedrop2; and make sure wxPython, wax, and firedrop2 are all in your site-packages directory.

Opening the firedrop GUI from the firedrop2 folder: Inside the firedrop2 folder that is now in your site-packages directory, you will find a few dozen python programs. The only one you must concern yourself with is the wxfiredrop.py program. Run this program, wxfiredrop.py, either from the command line or by double clicking on it in your file browser. This opens up the firedrop GUI that looks like this on MAC OS X:

Note that on Windows, the title bar that sits atop the whole Mac screen is integrated into the main firedrop2 GUI frame; this title bar includes the drop down menus " File, Edit, Format, Window, and Help". Below this you will find a row of buttons labeled "Open, New, Save, Build, Preview, Upload, and One-Click." Also, on Windows, the buttons will be rectangular instead of oval (pill-shaped) on the Mac.

Create a weblog or article collection folder: Now, using your system tools, create a new folder to hold your weblog or article collection. This folder can be anywhere you want it, just remember where you put it ;-))). let's say you create a new, empty folder called weblog in your desktop directory. Then, manually, create a new empty folder inside your weblog folder and name it weblog_html. This folder will be used to hold your actual weblog html files.

Now, on the firedrop2 title bar, click "File" and a drop down menu appears giving you a choice between "new site" and "open site". Click on "new site" and a dialog box opens. You must choose between creating an ArticleCollection or a Weblog. Let's say you chose "Weblog". Then you must choose a directory, and let's say you choose the new folder (directory) called "weblog" that you just created. Click OK and firedrop2 will fill-in your weblog folder with the files build.ini, build.py, page_template.html and entry_template.html.

Build.ini will look something like this:

output_dir="weblog_html"

archive_method = "d:7"

page_template = 'page_template.html'

entry_template = 'entry_template.html'

num_front_page = 20

frontpage_name = 'index.html'

root_url = 'http://www.awaretek.com/weblog/'

categories = ["philosophy", "general", "firedrop", "python", "poetry"]

title="AwareTek weblog"

description = ""

ftp_server = 'awaretek.com'

ftp_login = 'xxxxx%xxxxxxxxx.com'

ftp_port = 21

ftp_password = 'xxxxxx'

ftp_startdir = '/usr/local/apache/htdocs/weblog'

rss_filename = 'index.xml'

macro_filename = 'macros.py'

blogping = 0

You should open the file build.ini and fill in the root url of the website you will use for your Blog, as well as the categories you will use to order your posts (you can leave this blank for now, if you want), and the ftp information for firedrop's automatic uploader.py program to find your web site and login, including your site password. If you build an ArticleCollection, your build.ini will look very similar and you must add the same kind of information.

Now, if you look at the file page_template.html you will see the default setup for how your blog page will look. This can and should be customized by you to be whatever you want.

Open Weblog: Now, using your firedrop GUI, click on the "Open" button. This will open up a file browser and you should navigate to the 'weblog" folder you recently created and that was populated with build.ini etc. by firedrop2. Upon accepting and choosing the "weblog" folder or directory, firedrop will "open" it, but it is still "empty" of any actual blog posts. The blog post titles, as you create them, will appear in the vertical rectangular window on the left; the actual post you are working on will be typed into the larger window on the right.

Create a New Post: Now, click on the "New" button. On the top of the blog post window, above the two -- dash lines, will appear two attributes, insert_date and modified_date. These two attributes are self explanatory. You can add any new attributes you want! This is one of the best features of Firedrop. For instance, most folks will want to create a categories attribute, and in fact you may recall that your build.ini already has a Python list called categories. If you add a string "poems' to your build.ini categories list, then you can add an expression categories="poems' above the two -- dashed lines in your blog post window.

Below the two -- dashed lines, you will see one line saying "New". Erase this line and insert instead your own Title of choice for this blog post. Let's say you choose "Hello World".

Now, for entering the main text of the blog post, you have two choices (actually more are available, but I am only going to cover two). First, you can just hit the return key twice and, starting on the second line below "Hello World" you can just type plain text. In this mode, you can also use HTMl tags, such as paragraph tags to set off separate paragraphs, and Some URL to set up web links.

The second alternative is to use Hans Nowak's sextile format. In order to do this, after typing in your blog post title "Hello World", immediately hit the return button and then type % below the "Hello World" title line, and then hit the return key twice (do not even hit the space bar after typing % before you hit the return key twice). Your blog post window should look like this:

insert_date='2004-01-31 15:38:48'
modified_date='2004-01-31 15:38:48'
--
Hello World
%

Main body of blog post text here...

I recommend using sextile, and I almost always do. The first difference you will notice (and appreciate) when using sextile is that you will not need to use the paragraph tags to offset paragraphs. Instead, you can just hit the return key twice to separate two paragraphs with a line of white space, just like you do in a normal text editor. You can still use regular html tags under sextile. There are many other features for ease of use in sextile and you are encouraged to read Han's docs on sextile on his web site. If sextile causes you any confusion, just go back to using plain text until you have furher studied sextile.

Whether you use sextile or not, you also will have available a powerful feature called "macros" to simplify the creation of blog posts. You are encouraged to read Hans' docs on Macros on his web site. Macros essentially allow you to define your own ease-of-use custom features.

Saving and Building and Uploading: Once your new post is as you want it, you click on the "Save" button and then on the "Build" button. You must click on these two buttons in the proper order, first "Save" and then "Build". "Save" saves a file of the form 00001.fd2 in your weblog folder. if you are saving your 100th post, the file saved will be 00100.fd2. When you click on the "Build" button, the program build.py (in your firedrop2 folder in your site-packages directory) will be run. build.py will use your build.ini file and will use the page_template.html file and the entry_template.html file to use your 00001.fd2 file to create an html file called index.html in your weblog_html folder. Recall that you created an empty folder called weblog_html and placed it in your weblog folder. This index.html file is your weblog. (If we had been creating an ArticleCollection, the process would have been the same but the file created by build.py would be given its own title.html name).

Now, you can click the "preview" button if you like to see what your blog post html (or your new article) will look like. Then you must click the "Upload" button to run the python script uploader.py, which uses the information you supplied to build.ini to log into your web site using ftp and upload the newly revised weblog (or new web article) to your web site.

There is also a button called "One Click" on the firedrop2 GUI, but I do not use it. One click will automatically do the whole sequence in order, save, then build, then upload. i find it safer and more helpful to do them one step at a time.

There is also a "Preview" button, that when clicked automatically opens up the created html file in your browser, in order for you to make sure it is as you want it before you upload it.

Since firedrop is open source and in Python, you can also do most of these things from the command line rather than from the GUI. Doing stuff from the command line is good because it helps you to see more of what goes on behind the scenes, and may give you ideas for future use.

On Windows XP, I have found everything to work perfectly. On Mac OS X 10.3, the only two features I have had trouble with are the "Preview" button, which I don't use any way (one can always click on the index.html file to open manually to preview); and the uploader.py script, which I think is a problem between my Mac and my website. At any rate, I use an ftp program manually from the command line to upload my files to my website.

However you have done it, now you have accomplished something!

Final Comments: There is of course a lot more you can do with Firedrop. Keep in min that tis is written in Python and is pen source, adn you can add features and customize two you hearts content. You can also explore the code and se how everything works. meanwhile, Hans is still coding away and adding features, so thing may change. keep is touch with his web log at http://www.zephyrfalcon.org/weblog/ fro future developments. And, if you have any questions about Firedrop or these docs, please ask them at http://pub38.ezboard.com/bawaretek

Important Links

Coming Soon: Firedrop Mini How-To End User Docs

I am working on some end user docs for Firedrop that I hope will be useful to new users. I have found Firedrop (which I use to create this Blog and manage this web site) to be useful and fun. I have been using it since around Christmas and if I can learn to use it, then it can be a good tool for anyone, since I am generally clueless. I think Firedrop can be of great interest to Pythonistas who want a scriptable and extensible tool. But given the fine work that Hans Nowak has been doing in recent weeks, I am beginning to think that Firedrop can also be a most effective client side blog and content management system for non-Python folks.

The docs, which will first appear here as a rather extensive Blog post, will be addressed to both kinds of users. I do hope to get the first version up here within a week or so.

Firedrop2 Update

I have been using Firedrop2 for several days now. As a web logging tool, Firedrop2 has a few characteristics that stand out:

1. Firedrop2 is for client side blog creation. Its nice to have a tool that is specifically for those of us without our own server.

2. It is written in Python, is open source, and is extendable and customizable in Python.

3. It allows easy creation and sorting of posts by categories, and automatically creates and maintains archives.

4. It automatically creates RSS feeds.

While numbers 3 and 4 above may be typical of almost all blog tools these days, and number one defines the field of client side blogging tools, it is number 2, the ability to easily customize and extend Firedrop2 using Python that is most important.

As a content management system, Firedrop2 is easy and simple to use:

1. It allows easy creation of new web pages.

2. It cleanly separates content from presentation.

3. The presentation is done using CSS and page templates.

4. It is easy to maintain backups and archive change histories.

5. It is extensible and customizable in Python.

Again, the ability to enhance and improve Firedrop2 using Python is its most attractive feature, along with its clean architecture. Firedrop2 is for Python hackers who want a content management framework that is simple and extensible.

I am using Firedrop2 on Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) and I have had a few minor Mac related issues, but the system is very usable. I hope to evenutally write and post some end user documentation for Firedrop2 that is aimed at ease-of-use.

Firedrop2: First Impressions

My impressions of Firedrop, after only a few days of using it, are mostly very favorable. I am running Firedrop on my dual 867 MHz. PowerMac desktop at home. The only two features of Firedrop that don't quite work right yet on Mac OS X are both gui-related; the "Preview" feature and the "Upload" feature. Firedrop provides a very nice GUI front end, allowing me to open a weblog folder, enter a new post for my blog, save the post, and build a revised weblog folder incorporating not only the new post, but also new archives, and updating the database containing all the other attributes of the new post. "Preview" is a button that lets you view the new post in the Gui window pane; "Upload" automatically uploads your new post and archive files to your web site. I really don't need Preview, I can view my new post just fine in a browser, and for now, really, I don't need to do that, since my posts are text only. The upload issue is no doubt a problem with the way Python on the Mac handles ftp, since I have had that problem before. Preview may be a problem with the wxPython implementation, I don't know.

In order to use Firedrop, you must first install Python, then wxPython, then WAX, Hans Nowak's GUI toolkit that sits atop wxPython. wxPython itself sits atop wxWindows. My experience with wxPython is good; it is truly cross platform and I have installed and used it on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. It looks and feels like native code on all three environments. Installation is mostly easy, although I did originally have some problems with dependencies on the Mac; but those are easier now that Mac OS X 10.3, Panther, is out, at least in my experience. My advice is this; just be sure to take your time and follow the instructions precisely, step by step, in order to install wxPython. The version number of each dependency is crucial.

Firedrop's wxPython GUI looks good, functions crisply and quickly, and is user-friendly. Firedrop's blog capabilities include categories to sort your posts by, archives by date , and other features I have not yet explored. You can enter your new posts in plain text, or use Hans' Sextile module, which makes blogging even simpler by allowing one to enter simple text that is converted to HTML automatically. There is a gentle learning curve to Sextile but its pretty simple, even for me. There is also a Macro capability that allows you to define your own acronyms and typing shortcuts, like for url's that you use frequently.

And, of course, the real appeal of Firedrop is that it is scriptable in Python, so I can improve and customize it as I go. Well, I'm really happy with Firedrop so far. I'll enter updates on how I'm doing with it on this blog from time to time as the year progresses.

Cheers, Ron Stephens