The source code to BloGTK 2.0 is now available at Launchpad. That means that if you’ve been waiting to hack away, you now can do so.

Launchpad has some impressive collaborative features, and while I’m still getting my “sea legs” in terms of how it all works, it seems to be a good way of managing this project in the future.

You will need to install Bazaar to get access to the code. Under Ubuntu, that’s as simple as

sudo apt-get install bzr

in a terminal window. Other distributions can get in on the fun too, but you’re on your own.

Right now, BloGTK needs only two additional packages from a stock Ubuntu install. Those packages are python-gnome2-extras and python-feedparser. Once those are installed, BloGTK should run.

Create a new working directory and run the command

bzr branch lp:blogtk

and the code will download to a blogtk directory.

Right now, BloGTK 2.0 has no installer, and must be run right from the testing directory. It will create a new folder in your home directory called .BloGTK where the config data and cache are stored.

BloGTK is not beta software, this is at best an early alpha. Many features are missing. Some things may not work as intended. Some things may not work at all. BloGTK needs a lot of love, and most importantly it needs a lot of eyeballs and testing.

Feel free to use Launchpad to hack away at the code and especially feel free to contribute patches and suggestions. The more help I can get, the faster BloGTK development will go.

Enjoy your BloGTK hacking, and hopefully as time goes by, BloGTK 2.0 will become one of the best weblog editors out there.

It’s only been a few days since the new BloGTK was announced, and already development is continuing at a more rapid pace than I would have expected. For a project being done in my limited free time, BloGTK is moving right along.

No, I don’t have an ETA for the first release. Other than “when it’s done,” of course.

So far, support for creating and editing new posts with Blogger, Movable Type, and WordPress is working. The UI is shaping up nicely—and that means that there will be some screenshots coming in the near future.

What’s left? The configuration system needs to be built, there’s a bunch of tools in the editor that need to be built, and then round after round of testing. BloGTK 1.0 was pretty buggy—I’m hoping that 2.0 will be better and more stable.

There will be more updates as development progresses. The website will also be getting an upgrade (with the old theme being given new life as a WordPress theme) sometime in the near future. Keep checking back here for more updates as BloGTK continues to push closer to release.

It’s been a while since there was an update to BloGTK. During the last period of development for BloGTK there were so many frustrations and so little time that I had to give up.

Flash forward to a few weeks ago when I’m putting together my new Ubuntu box—I notice that there’s a Python library for Blogger’s GData system installed. And it even has a nice system for interfacing with Blogger. When I last did work on BloGTK 3 years ago, I had a lot of the app built. Maybe it was time to take another shot?

This entry is being created in BloGTK 2.0. The build is nowhere near complete, but there has been enough progress that it’s safe to announce its existence to the world.

BloGTK 2.0 will add some great new features like:

• A completely revamped interface designed for multiple blogs
• A new editor, with integrated spellcheck, HTML syntax highlighting, and undo/redo.
• Support for multiple categories.
• Full support for Blogger
• Autodiscovery of weblog settings (if your blog template supports it
• And much more…

There is no release date for BloGTK 2.0, as it all depends on finding programming time in my busy schedule. However, this time the technical hurdles have been surpassed and it is possible to deliver the kind of program that users have been asking for.

There will be much more coming as development continues on the next generation of BloGTK.