Blogsym

For the impatient: Go to the end of the page for the download link.

Introduction

Blogsym is a "blog compiler". It's a Common Lisp program that creates web pages from a set of description files.

News

• 6 July 2005: First public release (1.0)

Description

Features

Multiple languages

Blogsym supports Finnish and English out of the box and makes adding other languages easy. Multilingual support was the primary reason for writing Blogsym in the first place instead of using existing blog software.

"Multilingual support" in Blogsym means that all blog entries can be in one or more languages, all versions sharing (if desired) the same set of links, thus minimising copy-and-paste drudgery.

Daily weather reports

Blogsym can use CSV files available from Australian Bureau of Meteorology to attach daily weather reports to pages.

Commenting

Readers can leave comments, as with any other blog software.

Geo tags

Blogsym can insert GeoTags and GeoURL compatible location tags.

RSS feed

A RSS 2.0 feed file containing most recent entries is constructed whenever Blogsym is run.

Amazon links

Amazon associate links can be easily created.

Extensible

Blogsym is written in Common Lisp, the most malleable programming language there is.

Requirements

• A Common Lisp compiler/interpreter. Blogsym is developed using OpenMCL on MacOS X, however, no implementation-specific features are used.
• The comment feature is implemented using MySQL. It would not be difficult to get rid of the commenting stuff if MySQL is not available. It would probably not be a major undertaking to make Blogsym support other databases.
• The output is in PHP (mainly because of the comment feature), so the pages need to be served by a PHP-savvy web server. It would be relatively easy to convert Blogsym back to outputting plain HTML (which is what it did until quite recently).

To Do

• Better (or at least some) documentation.
• Adding more languages and fixing the bugs that will inevitably surface when that happens.
• Entry categories.
• Category-specific RSS feeds.
• Better handling of monthly indexes. The current version unnecessarily recreates them for every page. A better solution would be to create one copy and use the PHP file include feature to import that.

Maybe

• Atom feeds.

Summary

License

Blogsym is licensed under The MIT License, as follows:

;;;; Copyright © 2004, 2005 Olli-Pekka Rinta-Koski

;;;; Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
;;;; obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
;;;; files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
;;;; restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
;;;; copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
;;;; copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
;;;; Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
;;;; conditions:

;;;; The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
;;;; included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

;;;; THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
;;;; EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
;;;; OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
;;;; NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
;;;; HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
;;;; WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
;;;; FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
;;;; OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Example

(defmonth 2005 6
  (14 ("nowroasting"
       (soundtrack ("Raw Deal" ost) (amazon "B0000658FS"))
       (footnote "Even though they all do His bidding anyway." "Vaikka
kaikkihan ne Hänelle työskentelevät muutenkin.")
       ("http://www.greatdante.net/" "Dante")
       brisbane)

      "@0@1

When @3 visited Hell, the sign on the gate said \"Abandon all hope
ye who enter here\". Since then, Satan has switched ad agencies@2 and
updated to a more concise slogan."

      "@0@1

@3n käydessä Helvetissä portin päällä luki \"Ken tästä käy, saa
kaiken toivon heittää\". Sittemmin Saatana on vaihtanut
mainostoimistoa@2 ja siirtynyt iskevämpään sloganiin."))

Download

Current version

Blogsym version 1.0, released 6 July 2005:

eb36c312768555ece829a18e5a866a6f  blogsym-1.0.tar.gz

tar.gz contents

drwxr-xr-x ola/ola           0 2005-07-06 23:23:30 blogsym-1.0/
-rw-r--r-- ola/ola        2025 2005-07-06 23:23:30 blogsym-1.0/blog.conf    ;; example
-rw-r--r-- ola/ola       64991 2005-07-06 23:23:30 blogsym-1.0/blogsym.lisp ;; source code
-rw-r--r-- ola/ola       23093 2005-07-06 23:45:14 blogsym-1.0/example.blog ;; example
-rw-r--r-- ola/ola         553 2005-07-06 23:23:30 blogsym-1.0/htaccess     ;; example

Correspondence

Any comments, patches etc. can be sent to blogsymrinta-koski.net. Be sure to put "Blogsym" in the subject. Even though there is no warranty, express or implied, your chances of getting something fixed will improve immensely if I am made aware of the problem.