Blogging Roller

Erin Clerico and the folks over at Weblogger.COM are upset about the name RollerWeblogger and have asked me to change it.  Now, I don't think that RollerWeblogger is the best name in the world, and it certainly does not roll (no pun intended) off the tongue - but it is the name that I chose.  If I change it, not only will I make it more difficult for people to find Roller, but I will also break all of the links out there that point to the articles on my personal weblog. As a weblogger (can I still call myself that?), this is pretty upsetting to me.

I was under the impression that weblogger is a generic term meaning "one who weblogs." Erin claims they own the copyright on the word, but from a couple of Google searches I get the impression that you cannot copyright a word, you can only trademark a word.  And the USPTO says that the trademark on the word "weblogger" is dead and abandoned.  But, what do I know: I am not a lawyer.

Neither Roller nor the Roller name endangers Erin's current or future business in any way, shape, or form. The names and the purposes of our two sites are very different.  I really don't think RollerWeblogger.ORG is confusingly similar to Weblogger.COM at all.  Here is how I would summarize the two entities:

I don't want to offer weblogging services and I do not want newbies to try and download the Roller software, so I try to direct them to other blogging services such as Blogger and Radio.  I tell them that if you want an easy to use weblogger then Roller is not for you.  To be honest, I did not realize that Weblogger.com offered such services or they would already be in my list of alternatives to Roller posted on the main Roller page.

Erin and I are still on fairly friendly terms: I offered to put a big disclaimer on my site and a link directing people to Weblogger.COM and Weblogger.COM offered to buy me a new domain name.  I am glad that we are trying to work this out in a amicable way, but I still feel threatened by legal action that I cannot afford to fight.  Any offers of advice, legal and otherwise, are more than welcome. I do not want to change Roller's name!

<a href= "http://www.russellbeattie.com/notebook/index.jsp?date=20020918#123035"> Signing the Ekit applet might be the proper way to get copy-and-paste to work for most users, but the quick-and-dirty way is to drop the ekitapplet.jar into the trusted extensions directory of your JRE ( <jre>/lib/ext ).

I propose starting an opensource project to do RSS aggregation. I think the Radio model of viewing it through a web page is nice, so I'm thinking we build it using WebWork. Storage of RSS feed subscriptions can be as easy as saving them in an XML file. Scheduling of feed updates could be done with Quartz. This could be very simple at first (all jobs are synch'd on the same schedule), then made more and more advanced (allowing individual schedules per feed, etc.) [Jason Carreira]

That sounds great, but make the aggregation engine modular so it can be used in Struts apps, WebWork apps, and in client-side aggregators favored by Rickard and others.

During the editing, I've created a ghost bookmark folder. When I go into bookmarks I saw two Blog folders. Once I deleted this folder I had two News folders. When I deleted News, all was right again. Hmmm.... sounds like a bug. Another possible bug I was trying to grab the RSS/XML link to Anthony's blog. I kept getting my RSS feed. [Jeff Duska - A cup of joe]

I made big changes to bookmark management in Roller 0.9.5, so the first issue has probably been fixed.  I think Anthony is planning on upgrading once Roller 0.9.6 is out. I added a bug in JIRA for the second issue.  Please enter bugs into JIRA if you can because we might miss them if you only post them on your blogs.

<a href= "http://indiago.blogspot.com">Bala Murali has posted some of <a href= "http://indiago.blogspot.com/2002_09_15_indiago_archive.html#81711245"> his thoughts on the future of Roller.

We have permission to distribute the Ekit HTML Editor applet from hexidec.com with Roller.  Ekit is distributed under the GPL, so it cannot be used in commercial applications or even in non-GPL open source apps such as Roller.  Fortunately, Howard Kistler the author of Ekit has given us permission to distribute Ekit with Roller.  He is considering a switch to a less restrictive open source license.  

I will probably make Ekit optional because applets are fairly heavy and because, as Russell points out, applets don't support cut-and-paste from other apps.  Thanks to some JSP and JavaScript code from Russell, I've almost finished integrating Ekit into Roller's edit-weblog page.  Hopefully, I'll commit my changes later on today.

Russell has put a weblog front end on this SimpleWeb Wiki software. SimpleWeb is the software that runs Russell's SimpleFace user interface design and usability website. I think every Wiki should have a weblog like front-end, it draws you in and helps to build the community spirit of the site. But, should every weblog have an integrated Wiki? That is a different question. I did a little googling and found that people have been discussing the weblog-wiki intersection for some time now.

• John Udell writes "the model according to which Wikis federate is something that the blogging community could profitably study. Peter Thoeny explained it all to me once. Now I want to look into all that again."
• Bill Seitz writes "another approach would be to make a separate Wiki node for each nugget, and the WebLog would really be the RecentChanges page..." and he indicates that he has been disucssing wikis and weblogs since September 1999.
• The Wiki Weblogs page on Abbe Normal's site has a collection of Wiki Weblog links, I just added SimpleWeb.
• 0xDECAFBAD discusses "an interesting melding of weblog and wiki over at www.tesugen.com.
• Mockerybird writes "the marriage of <a href="http://mockerybird.com/index.cgi?node=wiki&ref=wiki-weblog&t=hl" class="nodelink">wiki and <a href="http://mockerybird.com/index.cgi?node=weblog&ref=wiki-weblog&t=hl" class="nodelink">weblog. In my opinion, the next logical step in weblog evolution. It allows the weblog to become even more interconnected and relevant over time."
  

I don't agree with Russell's point that blog enties just disappear when they roll off the page. The couple blog entries in the list above are proof that entries live a long life. Google, good site search, and full-screen calendars keep those old posts alive.

Seems to me that integrating a Wiki into Roller would be pretty easy.  All Roller would need are some nice macros for displaying and linking to the Wiki pages. Am I missing something here?  Is there more to it than that?  More importantly, would it be feature bloat or useful stuff?

Tonight, I'm working on moving the Roller Roadmap into <a href= "http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/roller/Dashboard.jspa"> JIRA.

I have changed all of the 'Bugs' links on this and the other Roller pages to point to JIRA, but I was not able to disable the bug tracker at SourceForge. If you know how to do this, please tell me the trick.

Jeff Duska has posted his thoughts on the future of Roller. He has some interesting ideas on CMS-like features and slick client-side blogging UIs for the roadmap.

And Jeff: I should have told you to use macros.showEntryPermalink(entry) - my bad.

Yesterday I woke up to find an AIM message from Mike Cannon-Brooks offerering to set up JIRA for Roller issue and bug tracking. Today, I woke up to find an AIM message on the screen from Mike informing me that he has set us up and that he has already entered our SourceForge bugs into the system. This is awesome! Take a look:

• <a href= "http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/roller/Dashboard.jspa"> Roller Issues and Bugs - powered by JIRA
• <a href= "http://opensource.atlassian.com/projects/roller/secure/IssueNavigator.jspa?pid=10000&tempMax=25&view=rss&reset=true"> RSS feed for Roller Issues and Bugs - powered by JIRA

Thanks Mike and thanks to Atlassian. This will make it much easier for us to manage and prioritize our "roadmap" feature list and our bugs. From what I've seen, I think we will also learn a little about good user-interface design in the process.

Anthony Eden has a unique perspective on Roller because he is running a website that supports over 40 Roller users. He is our biggest customer and he needs better admin tools.

<a href= "http://www.raibledesigns.com/page/rd/20020903#the_future_of_roller"> Matt mentioned the idea of adding an option for drop-down menus in the Editor UI and mentioned StrutsMenu. Some time ago, I looked at StrutsMenu and it did not do quite what I wanted to to, so I set about creating a generic JSP menu tag using an MVC architecture. The Roller MenuTag reads the menu configuration from an <a href= "http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/roller/roller/deploy/WEB-INF/editor-menu.xml?rev=1.9&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup"> XML file and then calls a <a href= "http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/roller/roller/src/org/roller/presentation/tags/menu/tabbed.tpl?rev=1.2&content-type=text/vnd.viewcvs-markup"> Velocity script to render the menu.

So, creating a new drop-down menu should be as simple as writing a new Velocity script to spit out the right code to invoke CoolMenu or Hiermenu or what have you.

Looking back, I probably should have used Struts Menu as a base for my work, but I wanted to try out the ideas in Gregory Gerard's article on Accelerating JSP Tag Development with Jakarta Velocity

<a href= "http://www.raibledesigns.com/page/rd/20020903#the_future_of_roller"> Matt Raible responded with his thoughts on Roller and the things he is interested in developing. I'm really looking forward to the UI enhancements he wants to do.

It is really cool to hear what people are interested in doing both on the Roller dev list and on the blogs, because there are so many things that just would not have entered my mind if I had been working alone. I know the middle pretty well, Servlets and JSP, but my knowledge of the back-end database stuff and the front-end browser/XHTML stuff is pretty minimal. I'm learning a lot from the Roller contributors and I'm grateful.

As you can see, I'm proudly displaying Rebelutionary's stylin' new java.blog logo at the top of my page.

I'm back at work after the 3-day Labor Day weekend. I have not gotten much response to my three questions for Roller users and developers, but that's OK. I need to collect the various feature requests that folks have emailed in or posted.

It's good for the Java world to have a solid blog alternative, I hope for more great things from Roller! [Roller 0.9.5 - Rebelutionary]

Thanks for the kind words!

What with everyone talking about SnipSnap I'm wondering if we should strive to have the same features (me too, me too) or if there are avenues where we can strike some innovation. So far the Roadmap reads either like a list of "things Roller must have to be a real blogger tool" or a list of "things Roller must do because others have done them." Which do we want to be? [ Lance Lavandowska - Roller wins praise]

Those are good questions. If you are interested in using or working on Roller, I'd be interested in hearing your answers to the following questions:

1) What do you want Roller to be?

I'd like Roller to be a great weblogging system, website builder, an innovative communications tool, and a J2EE best-practices example app. Wiki features certainly fit into that sort of charter. But Roller's direction is going to be determined by what I and other contributors are motivated to do, which brings me to question #2:

2) What are you interested in working on?

Right now, I'm motivated to work on the newsfeed aggregator, to add a simple commenting system, and to add trackback-like referrer tracking. What about you?

3) What features would you like to see added to Roller?

The Roller roadmap is my answer to this question, but the roadmap is really more of an unprioritized wish-list. Help us build and prioritize the roadmap by letting us know what you wish for in Roller.

Matt Raible has successfully upgraded to Roller 0.9.5. The problems that Matt encountered were minor: a couple of Installation Guide mistakes and a problem with the Roller 0.9.4 to Roller 0.9.5 database migration script. At this point, I don't think a Roller 0.9.5.1 release is necessary. If you are going to try Roller 0.9.5 please be aware of the following caveats:

• Use the online version of the Installation Guide instead of the one that comes with the Roller download.
• If you are doing a Roller 0.9.4 to Roller 0.9.5 migration, contact us on the roller-user list and we will hook you up with the right database migration script and we will try to walk you through the migration process.

Matt Raible has encounted a couple of problems with the new Roller 0.9.5 release. I'm still not sure if this will warrant a 0.9.5.1 release, but I will keep you posted.

• The example Context configuration in the Installation Guide creates a JDBCRealm that points to the table 'user' when it should point to the table named 'rolleruser'. This has been corrected in the online copy of the Roller Install Guide.
• The Roller 0.9.4 to 0.9.5 migration scripts fails to migrate the BOOKMARK table correctly. We are still looking into this one and should have an answer later today.

Roller 0.9.5 is <a href= "http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=47722&release_id=108217"> available for download at SourceForge. This new Roller release includes enhancements for XHTML support, bookmark management, database support for PostgreSQL and HSQL-DB, and some bug fixes. Thanks to new Roller contributors Lance Lavandowska, Matt Raible, Simon Stewart for their work on this release. New features:

• Support for XHTML and CSS in generated weblog pages (Matt)
• Better Page URLs in the Navigation Bar Tag and PageServlet (Lance)
• Support for HSQL and PostgreSQL databases (Lance and Simon)
• Export feature for backing up website (Dave)
• Bookmark import by file-upload of OPML file (Dave)
• Multiple bookmark move and delete on edit-bookmark page (Dave)
• Some bug fixes