Userland

Error compromises my book

I'm reviewing the manuscript for Radio UserLand Kick Start. The error in this sentence is one of my favorite gaffes in six years of writing computer books: The first step in becoming a Radio UserLand developer is to explore Radio.root, the object database that compromises most of the program's core functionality. The word I was looking for: comprises. I'm almost sad the typo won't see print. ... (read more)

Radio database is gettin' busy

I'm working on a UserTalk script that restores Radio weblogs from their HTML Web pages. It's not ready for prime time -- I have to run it locally and tweak the code on a per-weblog basis -- but at some point I am hoping to release it for general use. One problem I'm running into is a "busy database" issue with the new database where weblog data is being stored. If the script halts with an error during execution, I can't access that database again without restarting Radio. Is there any way in ... (read more)

Adding dates to Radio page titles

Radio UserLand tip: To add a date to the title of each daily archive page, add the following UserTalk code inside the title tag of the home page template (#homeTemplate.txt): <%local (d); if radio.weblog.file.getArchiveFileDate (radioResponder.fileBeingRendered, @d) {": " + string.dateString (d)} else {""}%> This code will be replaced with the date in the form "Monday, June 30, 2003" (example). ... (read more)

10,000 reasons to read Adam Curry

Adam Curry has revealed an interesting investment he made in UserLand 18 months ago: He paid $10,000 for his weblog to be included in Radio's default RSS subscriptions. Now he thinks the Echo Project's work is undoing his canny marketing: I will again invest $10k in aggregator default placements this year, but I will spread it around, to all developers who adhere to RSS2.0. Include (N)echo and you're out of luck. I don't understand his concern. If an aggregator can read a format, so can its ... (read more)

Working with text in Radio and Frontier

Brent Simmons offers a handy tip for Radio and Frontier programmers: How to extract text from a word-processing text object. ... (read more)

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)

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)

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)

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)

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)