Tone's Notes

Updating a posting via the SimpleBlogService was eliminating all categories and making the title link disappear.

The implementation of  Update in DataDTOProvider.cs expects the entry’s PostType property to be set and it wasn’t. This resulted in a CategoryType of StoryCollection being used where PostCollection would have been correct. The correct thing to do would be for Entries.GetEntry and Entries.GetCategoryEntry to correctly initialize the PostType property.

Since this wasn’t happening, I force the PostType to BlogPost in the Edit method of SimpleBlogService.

To correctly update the categories assigned to a post and prevent the assigned categories from being erased I added an overload for the Edit method that takes an array of category strings.

The flag enumeration values shared by the blog_Content table trigger hadn’t been updated which resulted in the stats not being updated (PostCount, CommentCount, etc.)

The data stored in the Dottext cookie under 0.95 fails to parse under the current version of 0.96 (today’s source).

The symptom is a “The root element is missing” XML parsing error immediately on all pages.

The work-around is to delete the cookie. You can either use ToolsàInternet OptionsàDelete Cookies which will delete all your cookies, or ToolsàInternet OptionsàSettingsàView Files; the sort by Address and find the dottext cookie associated with your deployment web site and delete it.

The current Dottext schema is adding user account and user role features which requires a little manual database updating:

1.      Add a record to the blog_GenericUsers table:

a.       UserName & Password, copy from blog_Config table.

b.      PasswordFormat = 1

c.       UserAccountStatus = 1

d.      IsAnonymous = 0

e.       ForceLogin = 1

2.      Add a record to the blog_UserProperties table:

a.       UserID, copy from blog_GenericUsers table.

b.      UserConfig = 3

3.      Add a record to the blog_Roles table:

a.       UserID, copy from blog_GenericUsers table.

b.      BlogID, copy from blog_Config table.

c.       BlogRoleID = 1

My goal is to get on the latest code base with minimal mods for my skin and web service needs.

Created a snapshot of vaultpub as of 2004-03-30 11:31. I’m leaving the bulk of the source files out of Perforce and not using the Perforce SCC with Visual Studio. It corrupted my first shot at it to the point that I couldn’t do anything with the DottextWeb project in the Solution anymore, but it was fine by itself. Grrr…. Visual Studio crashed several times during debugging and the Dottext.Framework assembly kept getting lost and needed to be rebuilt when opening the solution and attempting to debug. This is behavior I haven’t seen in any other project (or earlier version of dottext). I wonder if it has anything to do with the worker threads started by the index generation events?

Copied OtherStuff\Configs\096_Web.config to DottextWeb and made changes.

Compiled solution files. Build works. Rebuild chokes. RichEditor.ascx.resx may not be checked in.

Created SearchIndex folder and gave ASP.NET account write access to it.

Added a FordeIndexUpdate.aspx page to force initial index population.

URL’s in search results are not right. Hostname and application name aren’t being combined correctly. Part of it is hard coding in 096db.sql, blog_aggregate_Search stored procedure, modified to remove hard coded ‘weblogs.asp.net’ in search permalink generation. That fixes the host part but the application part is missing. Realized that by editing the urlFormat attribute of the SearchConfiguration element in the Web.config file I could re-insert the DottextWeb without modifying any code. The “domains” attribute seems to restrict which blogs are aggregated in the index and can be a comma separated list of Hosts, as defined in the blog_Config table.

At this point the application appears to run well on localhost, including the search functionality and standard skins.

Adding the mods required by TonesNotes:

·        SimpleBlogService, added AddImageToGallery method, modified how categoryID is obtained.

·        Made Images folder writeable by ASP.NET.

Adding btone skin:

·        Added print.css copied from AnotherEon001

·        Added span.highlight style to style.css

·        Skins\btone\PageTemplate.ascx, change DT namespace back to UI.WebControls and ‘ContentRegion’ back to ‘contentRegion’.

·        Skins\btone\controls\BlogSearch.ascx, added.

·        Added btone to Admin\Skins.config

·        Modified btone\controls files: SingleColumn.cs, MonthList.cs, PostComment.cs

·        Added Skins\btone\UIData.cs with PostCategoryHyperLinks method.

·        Modified btone\controls files: Days.cs, EntryList.cs, ViewPost.cs

Initial merge complete.

When using Windows Authentication mode with .Text and a SQL Server Database.

The ASPNET account has to be given access to the database and added to the db_owner role.

The latest release of TonesNotes is available here http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/tonesnotes. It lets you post to a .Text blog from any open Word document and now supports posting images in the body of the note.

The README.htm file installed with the release contains a code change for the Dottext blog server to support posting images.

The latest version of TonesNotes lets you post blog entries from Word that contain images:

Here is the change required of 0.95 vintage Dottext codebase.

Add the following method to the SimpleBlogService.asmx.cs file:

/// <summary>

/// Add an image to a specified gallery and return the url by which it will be accessible.

/// </summary>

/// <param name="username"></param>

/// <param name="password"></param>

/// <param name="gallery">Title of the target gallery, gallery will be created if it doesn't exist.</param>

/// <param name="postdate">Date to associate with the image. Not currently supported by the data model.</param>

/// <param name="title">Title for the image.</param>

/// <param name="description">Description for the image.</param>

/// <param name="categories">Array of categories to associate with the image. Not currently supported by the data model.</param>

/// <param name="filename">The non-path image filename including extension. Note that currently filenames must be unique within a gallery.</param>

/// <param name="data">Image file data in on-disk format matching the filename's extension.</param>

/// <returns>A url in the form http://blogs.mydomain.com/myblog/8/o_filename.jpg, where 8 is the integer CategoryID assigned to the gallery.

/// The returned url is an absolute url with a "o_" prefix on the filename.

/// Caller can make the prefix "t_" for thumbnail and "r_" for standard size.</returns>

[WebMethod(MessageName="AddImageToGallery",Description="Insert an image into a gallery with Categories",EnableSession=false)]

public string AddImageToGallery

      ( string username

      , string password

      , string gallery

      , DateTime postdate

      , string title

      , string description

      , string[] categories

      , string filename

      , byte[] data

      ) {

      BlogConfig config = Config.CurrentBlog(Context);

      CheckUser(username,password);

      int categoryID = 0;

      // Lookup the categoryID of gallery (gallery is the title).

      LinkCategoryCollection lcc = Links.GetCategories(CategoryType.ImageCollection, false);

      foreach (LinkCategory lc in lcc) if (string.Compare(lc.Title, gallery, true) == 0) { categoryID = lc.CategoryID; break; }

      // If gallery doesn't exist, try creating it.

      if (categoryID == 0) {

            LinkCategory category = new LinkCategory();

            category.CategoryType = CategoryType.ImageCollection;

            category.Title = gallery;

            category.IsActive = false;

            category.Description = "Images uploaded with new posts.";

            categoryID = Links.CreateLinkCategory(category);

            if (categoryID == 0) throw new Exception("CategoryID is zero");

      }

      // Insert the new image into the selected gallery.

      // This puts three copies (thumbnail, standard size, original size) of the image on disk under the "images" folder

      // and adds a record to the blog_Images table.

      Image image = new Image();

      image.CategoryID = categoryID;

      image.Title = title;

      image.IsActive = true;

      image.File = Images.GetFileName(filename);

      image.LocalFilePath = Images.LocalGalleryFilePath(Context, categoryID);

      int imageID = Images.InsertImage(image, data); 

      if (imageID == 0) throw new Exception("ImageID is zero");

      string baseImagePath = Images.HttpGalleryFilePath(Context, image.CategoryID);

      return baseImagePath + image.OriginalFile;

}

I released the alpha version of my blog posting add-in for Microsoft Word 2003 or XP as a GotDotNet workspace: http://workspaces.gotdotnet.com/TonesNotes

TonesNotes is a free and lets you post to a .Text blog from any open Word document.

The intended mode of operation is to use a single Word document in which the ideas you’re working on take shape. When an idea is baked, place the insertion point within its content, click the “Post” button on the TonesNotes toolbar, and the content is simultaneously posted to one or more blogs and archived as a separate Word document on your local file system.

The command bar has a “New” button which starts a new entry at the bottom of the active Word document. An entry is demarked by a paragraph with the style “Heading 1” by default. The “New” command inserts a paragraph with a date stamp which will become the post creation time. Complete the note heading with a comma separated list of categories and a title. Anything in the note heading paragraph not recognized as a date or category name becomes part of the title.

Since not all ideas are suitable for public posting, the behavior of the Post command is driven by assigning a category name to each configured blog. A note is posted to each blog whose category name is listed in the entry heading, or simply archived if it isn't meant to be blogged.

In addition to the “New” and “Post” functions, the toolbar has a “Config” button which brings up the configuration dialog.

Here’s a topic page in the .Text wiki that lists pros, cons, and configuration for various authoring options including TonesNotes: http://dottextwiki.scottwater.com/default.aspx/Dottext.AuthoringOptions

There’s an IE5 & IE6 cascading style sheet (CSS) bug affecting the “AnotherEon001” skin.

The bug is visible if a post contains a “blockquote” element which contains a “P” element.

What you’ll see is all the text following the “div” containing the “blockquote” will be shifted to the left from where it should have been.

The trigger for the bug is the “border-left” style applied to the “blockquote”.

Alternatives to avoid the bug:

1.      Remove the “border-left” style.

2.      Add a “border-bottom” style of equal width. Make it match the background if you don’t want to see it.

3.      Eliminate the “padding” style from the “blockquote”.

4.      Somehow arrange for the text within the “blockquote” not to contain any “p” elements J

Thanks for the insight into the bug goes to this link.