Salon Blogs

Radio UserLand loop has my head spinning

I've run into some unexpected behavior in UserTalk while documenting loop loops for Radio UserLand Kick Start. The following code ends up with a final displayed value of 3.4 in the About Radio UserLand dialog box: loop (local (i = 0.1); i ... (read more)

2003/06/24

Good docs for UserTalk programmers

One of the things I recommend in Radio UserLand Kick Start is for aspiring UserTalk programmers to frequent DocServer, the online documentation for UserTalk verbs. Although there are some omissions -- for instance, none of the radio verbs have been documented -- most of it appears to be correct as of Radio 8. ... (read more)

2003/06/21

Creating an index of weblog posts in Radio

Inspired by Rob Henerey's suggestion, I've written a Radio script that displays an index of weblog posts for the main weblog or a category. Looking at the output of the scripts, I wish I had started writing post titles earlier than February. ... (read more)

2003/06/18

Patching Radio to support RSS filtering

Matt Mower offers one line of code that UserLand can add to Radio so that the storyArrived callback can be used for my incoming RSS cleaner and other RSS scripts. I've tried his suggested patch and it works. ... (read more)

2003/06/17

UserLand: The next weblogging buyout?

Roland Tanglao writes in a comment to Workbench, "Too bad UserLand doesn't seem to have the money to hire one developer for each platform (Frontier, Manila and Radio) and the right number of support people, because if they did there's no way MovableType or anybody else could keep up with them." After Google bought Pyra and Moveable Type's developers secured venture financing, UserLand Software is the last chance for an outside company to buy their way into overnight credibility in weblog ... (read more)

2003/06/16

Restoring a Radio weblog from HTML files

The worst-case scenario for new Radio webloggers is to delete the Radio UserLand installation folder or lose it in a crash without a backup. Many new users believe that because their weblog is still on the Web, it can be easily restored from backup. Unfortunately, this is only true if the user has turned on nightly backups. Otherwise, there's no automated way to grab the entries from HTML Web pages and save the data in weblogData.root, the database in the Data Files folder where the entries and ... (read more)

2003/06/14

Preventing RSS exploits with Radio

I'm working on a Radio script that addresses RSS exploits. Mark Pilgrim's suggestion of weeding out the unsafe HTML seems futile. Instead, the script removes all HTML tags and attributes other than a small subset that can't be abused: P, B, I, BR, and BLOCKQUOTE (all without attributes), A (with HREF only), and IMG (with SRC, ALT, HEIGHT, and WIDTH only). I'm hoping the script also has the side benefit of making RSS entries easier to read. The script works on the text of entries, but I can't ... (read more)

2003/06/13

Displaying category links on Radio weblogs

New Radio UserLand macro: viewCategories() displays a list of links to a weblog's categories. The script supports Cascading Style Sheets and the placement of HTML before and after each link. ... (read more)

2003/06/11

Some Radio users downcast about upstreaming

Several people on the Radio UserLand customer support board are trying to find the cause for intermittent upstreaming problems. One theory is that people who use Radio with sometimes-on, sometimes-off Internet connections are more likely to have problems publishing. If any experienced Radio users can offer some assistance on this subject, there are at least a dozen people you can help pull back from the brink of madness. ... (read more)

2003/06/01

Radio Hackers Becoming Hacked Off

Some Radio UserLand hackers are becoming discouraged by the sheer weight of the program's UserTalk code and the bugs, quirks, and complexities it contains. Mark Paschal, who offers help frequently on the customer support discussion board, says that it is "as jury-rigged a Rube Goldberg device as ever." Jeremy Bowers believes it need a "serious housecleaning." For those who haven't looked around Radio's object database yet, the program runs atop one of the most intricate, fascinating, and ... (read more)

2003/05/25

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