Saturday, March 22

Geek

I Didn't Know You Could Do That With Minx!

And there are two likely reasons for that:
  1. You couldn't; this is a new feature in the forthcoming 1.2 release.
  2. Um, I never documented it.
Where the big thing in 1.1 was the new layout engine (and themes and such), there are three areas of focus in 1.2:
  1. Making sure everything that works is documented.
  2. Making sure everything that is documented works.
  3. Moving the support for sites other than blogs from experimental to production.
Here's a sample of 1, 2, and 3 in action: a short excerpt from The Minx Book.  You can see mention here of features related to wikis, site integration, and so on.

Progress on the book is slow at the moment because I am testing (and in some cases, coding) the features as I document them.  And progress on the 1.2 release has been slowed because I need to document everything as I code.  But it's all coming together for a big April release.

In this 25-page excerpt of the book, I give a brief overview of 2 of the top-level tags*, many of the formatting options, and the 1.0-version programming tags.

I think this may take a while.

On the other hand, many of the tags are minor variations on others - there's only about 70 distinct data structures in Minx - so once I get the templates set up I can easily churn out all the different combinations with a bit of cut-and-paste and search-and-replace.  Of course, if I overdo that, we'll end up with a 12,000 page manual...

* Out of 1068.  cry

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:30 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 264 words, total size 2 kb.

1 So, does this mean everyone currently on Minx moves to the new Minx when it comes out? Just out of curiosity you know. I looked at your Minx book and realized immediately that it was way over my head since I'm not into web design (although I do have people who keep trying to "make" me into a web designer... *grin*). I'm sure I could figure some of it out if I had an example site and the book - then I realize I don't have time right now and need to slap myself back to reality. Heh.

After wandering through all the stuff in my "Menu" section - I still click over to the Templates once in a while and (for instance) look at the various labels on my sidebar template and wonder where are these applets that are being called and can they be looked at and modified. Then I run out of time and give it up. LOL.

As usual I live my life in a state of confusion, but never have time to sort it out. Gotta love it.

Still, best part about Minx - publishes immediately and so far as I know (people tend not to tell me things so I could be wrong) comments actually work. 

Posted by: Teresa at Sunday, March 23 2008 03:22 AM (rVIv9)

2 Tried (repeatedly) downloading the PDF, and it either (1) stalls at 96% or, (2) won't open after download (Acrobat 4.0 says "There was an error opening document. Could not repair file.").

Downloaded file size (per "properties") is 229.376k. Am I getting the whole thing?

(Note that this is via my creaky dialup, which this morning is running a slightly-less-creaky-than-usual 48.0k.)

Posted by: Old Grouch at Tuesday, March 25 2008 12:37 AM (ILBHh)

3 I'm not sure if it will work in Acrobat 4.  I'll see about providing an HTML version, though.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, March 25 2008 10:46 AM (PiXy!)

4 Pixy, I don't think I'm getting the complete file.
Just tried it again (running WinXP), and the download manager stalled at 96%, although it also says "Done!, Downloaded 231.52KBytes in 41 seconds" (Right. This is on a dialup.) Explorer says it's 229,376 bytes (again). Opening it in an editor shows that ends with several hundred lines of "0000000000 65535 f", a single line "000", and a number of blank lines. There's no "trailer" or "%%EOF" marker, which seems to be typical of PDFs.
(Should probably mention that I've recently downloaded PDFs and MP3s from other sites and had no trouble.) Any ideas?

Posted by: Old Grouch at Wednesday, March 26 2008 01:05 AM (px1I2)

5 The actual length of the file is 237,081 bytes, so I think you have a dud copy in your cache or in an upstream proxy.  You could try clearing your browser cache, or try this alternate link and see if that works better for you.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, March 26 2008 10:40 AM (PiXy!)

6 Okay, it's getting really wierd.
First cleared the cache and rebooted. Then tried downloading from your alternate link via my regular browser (K-Meleon, uses Mozilla code). Still wouldn't open.
Next tried Internet Explorer. Downloaded with different save name. That one wouldn't open either.
I now have three files:
MinxBook_c.pdf, yesterday's third try, from the link in the original post, via k-meleon.
MinxBook.pdf, today, from the alternate link, via k-meleon.
MinxBook_IE.pdf, today, from the alternate link, via Internet Explorer.

And are you ready for this...
DOS "comp" says all 3 are identical. And they're all 229.376k.

Want to try emailing me a copy, or can I FTP in and grab it that way?

Posted by: Old Grouch at Thursday, March 27 2008 07:07 AM (hCe/Y)

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