Software: MaBloss

About MaBloss

MaBloss was an easy way to maintain weblogs, designed to be simple yet powerful. Its name stands for _ma_nipulating _blo_gs _s_imply with _s_cheme. It is a testbed implementation of my MABLOS interface (to be published) and is free software under the GPL.

Manipulating...

...is achieved with simple command-line instructions, ordering MaBloss to list, output, add or remove entries from a blog file. When you are finished, you can copy xhtml ("like html web pages, but newer") or RSS files to the web to publish them on most web servers, with no need to run CGI scripts on the server.

Blogs...

...including xhtml pages, RSS 1.0 feeds and Advogato diaries are handled in the current version.

Simply...

...output from one blog and pipe the result to the add command of another blog to copy from one to the other. The format and commands used are consistent between commands and are being documented, with the aim to publish. Compile your own edited aggregates from the blogs of others if you want (and with their permission, of course). Not a substitute for a Planet yet, but maybe an easy newsletter?

with Scheme...

...which makes it very easy to program. It's written in MzScheme, using only the included libraries for xhtml and RSS. The advogato tool requires the Xcheme- RPC extra package.

Download

Version 1.1 is usable from the command line, but there may be some places where it's subtly broken. The main parts are the mb-* executables, but there's the start of a blosxom clone too. There's also a BUGS list, including suggested improvements. I'd love patches (diff -u please) to improve it.

11 April 2004 saw the release of version 1.1.1 (GnuPG sig)