Hello; use with Blosxom

[Jason Clark]

On Mar 12, 2004, at 6:13 PM, John Gruber wrote:

> I might change this to make the Meta-integration the default, but
> I've heard from a few other Blosxom users who are using Markdown and
> who prefer the current defaults.
>
> I think perhaps what I'd like to do is check to see if the Meta
> plug-in is installed, and if so, then use it; if not, then apply
> Markdown to all posts automatically.
>

I had been thinking about this as well; even though meta is very 
commonly on Blosxom blogs, I don't like mandatory dependancies; and 
having an 'always on' option is a good idea.


Here's my second crack at revamping the Blosxom interface.

#### Blosxom plug-in interface 
##########################################

# Change $blosxom_always to 0 to use "meta-markup: markdown" story
# headers to enable Markdown on a per-story basis
my $blosxom_always = 1;

#don't change; auto-detects
my $blosxom_hasmeta;

sub start { 1; }
sub filter {
     $blosxom_hasmeta = defined(%meta::);
     1;
}
sub story {
     my($pkg, $path, $filename, $story_ref, $title_ref, $body_ref) = @_;

     if ($blosxom_always or ($blosxom_hasmeta and $meta::markup eq 
'markdown')) {
         $$title_ref = Markdown($$title_ref);
         $$body_ref  = Markdown($$body_ref);
     }
     1;
}

Notes:
  * Based on beta1; but then I don't think anything in the Blosxom 
interface changed in b2:

  * By default, it's still gonna always apply Markdown.  I think this 
should be the default; even if the Meta plugin is present, we can't 
assume the user wants to use it to control Markdown.  If you want to 
use meta-markup, set $blosxom_always to 0.

  * I check for the presence of meta instead of assuming it's avilable.  
If blosxom_always is 0, but meta plugin is not available, Markdown will 
never be invoked.

  * the check for meta occurs in blosxom interface's filter() method.  
start() is a poor choice because Markdown could be loaded before meta 
(and will be by default, which is alphabetical).  filter() will run for 
every plugin after all plugins are loaded.

  * This is running on my blog, but ought to be tested better.  I 
haven't actually tried uninstalling meta or flipping $blosxom_always to 
1.  I'm going to try and do that tommorow on my localhost Blosxom 
setup.  I'll also try and get it posted to my blog.


Jason Clark <jason at jclark.org>
http://jclark.org/weblog/