Dave Burke - Thoughts on some-other-dotText

Thoughts on some-other-dotText

The announcement of subText is now old news. Phil emailed me the other day about granting subText non-exclusive rights to all of the dotText code I posted in the past and I was happy to do it.

I certainly agree with a lot of Phil's manifesto on why dotText should live on. I spent a lot of quality time with dotText and know it pretty well. dotText 0.95 is a completely robust and intelligently designed application. Very accessible, easily understood architecturally, and a piece of cake to mod. Its relatively small and perfect for the audience subText is described to be serving.

My dbvt.com dotText blog rocked (the application anyway.) It was tight, baby. No bugs that I knew about or were ever reported to me. Fast. Dreamy. But I went to CommunityServer 1.0 anyway. Some bugs, yeah. Downright surprised and pissed about some of the shortcomings I found in it, in fact.

But I know I made the right move. No question. I knew dotText cold. It wasn't boring to me, certainly, because it was wonderfully written code and even after several months of exploration there were new discoveries to be made. But I moved to CS to follow the coding practices of Scott Watermasysk, Rob Howard, Jason Alexander, and those other Telligent cats (but mostly ScottW.) CS is an entirely new conversation, a new architecture with practices I find impressive as heck. I'm using CS to become a better developer, not because CS meets my blogging needs better than dotText (and nGallery) did, because it doesn't. dotText and nGallery were great, but written several years ago. Their authors have moved on and it was important to me as a developer (not a blogger) to move on as well. Updating to CS 1.1 and beyond is going to be a bitch with my mod-heavy CS 1.0 build, but I know Scott will continue to write smarter code and I want to have a reason to work with it.

Something that does bother me about subText though is all of the hoopla over a SourceForge.net project that has no screenshots, no documentation, and no code. I went to SourceForge.Net expecting to be able to download the code and compare it to dotText 0.95/0.96 builds, but there was really nothing there. I mean, if you're going to announce something, have something to show for it. Discussions about perptuating dotText were going on from Dan Bartels, Thomas Freudenberg, Miguel Jimenez and others for quite some time. Dan and Miguel have apparently moved to CS. Thomas has gone quiet for a while now.

Best wishes to Phil and other developers involved with subText.

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Posted on 5/9/2005 5:59:00 PM by Dave Burke
Categories: Community Server
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5/9/2005 10:41:17 PM Permalink

You can use CVS to get the latest build, for now. There is no "official" release as of yet.
The current build compiles and operates perfectly well. It has a few additions over and above .Text 0.95, such as your default button on the login page, an RSS image, a couple others. It also has an interface on firtst run (if no blog has been created) that will help you create your blog.
Similiar to CS, but it assumes you have already configured web.config with the db name/user/pass/server. This interface is more akin to DotTextHelper.

I would like to thank you for granting us non-exclusive use of your code. It will certainly help.

vern |

5/10/2005 12:07:35 AM Permalink

> Thomas has gone quiet for a while now.

*sigh*. Unfortunately, I haven't had the time for the last months, so my blog is really quiet (though I'm reading others extensively). And I'm still undecided whether to switch to CSBlogs or to stay with dottext. On the one hand, I'm very familar with dottext's code base, but on the other hand, I'd really like to explore CS's architecture. As you said. Anyway, I still don't see that I will have the time to do any major work on my site for the nextcouple of weeks. However, what's driving me nuts are the >30 comment spams per day, but I don't want to add a CAPTCHA to my blog. Maybe I have another solution.

Thomas Freudenberg |

5/10/2005 12:36:13 AM Permalink

Thomas,
Are you familiar with this method of spam-blocking;
http://netnerds.net/articles/462.aspx

It works extrememly well. I highly recommend it...

Now, is that a 6 or a G. I hope I don't lose my comment...

5/10/2005 1:45:06 AM Permalink

Yes, vern, I know this hack. However, I'd prefer a solution integrated in dottext (or csblogs). In fact, I've already started such a add-on. If I only had the time... :-/

(I'm glad there're only digits in the CAPTCHA )

5/10/2005 5:46:29 AM Permalink

Thanks for the update on subText source, Vern. And you're certainly welcome to the source. Thomas, great to witness your re-appearance! I've been missing your blog. Its still on my subscription list though, so I'll hope my Thomas Freudenberg folder goes "bold" someday soon and there will be something new in it.

daveburke |

5/10/2005 6:15:58 AM Permalink

Amen

--
Sonu Kapoor - [MCP]
WebSite: http://www.Kapoorsolutions.com
Blog: http://www.Kapoorsolutions.com/blog/
ASP.NET News: http://www.Kapoorsolutions.com/reblogger/

Sonu Kapoor |

5/10/2005 6:22:02 AM Permalink

Sonu, Good to hear from you, Brother. Thanks for the vote of agreement.

Hey, do you think people have a problem with always adding your multi-link SIG to comments? Seems kinda spammy to me...

5/10/2005 9:46:29 AM Permalink

Well, technically, it is integrated, in that it becomes just as much a part of dottext as CAPTCHA. It requires no input, which in my opinion is a bonus.
I am hoping we are going to have it as part of a default install for Subtext.

5/10/2005 2:50:31 PM Permalink

I just posted this over on a CS rant blog on RoundyBob.com.. but its on the same subject so I'll dare to cross post....

I look at it this way… There seems to have been about a year delay in the product offering (the Blog engine in CS)… What you don’t yet see is the future benefits of the architecture change…. The biggest thing here is where CS is going, not where it is now. There are several framework technologies (DNN, SharePoint, and even ASP.NET 2.0 WebParts) that are going to radically change how people build sites. .Text was a great blogging engine, but it fell short in my “site” needs.. DNN is not a bad general site, but it does not have the galleries and blog engine that are up to snuff. The goal is to bring all of these things together, to use the Microsoft Authentication and Personalization patters that are coming in 2.0, and to get this all to fall in place by the time ASP.NET 2.0 launches at the end of the year (They want to add a wiki too)

There are lots of places in CS, where simplicity had to be chosen over features… and so it might feel like a step back. The code has a new architecture, and 1.0 was rough, but better than nothing… I would rather be fixing bugs and driving features in a beginning of life project than holding on to an end of life one…

Just my 2c

Dan

Dan Bartels |

5/10/2005 3:02:06 PM Permalink

Cross post here anytime, Dan. That was much more than 2-cents worth. Always great to get your seasoned perspective on CS/dotText. I think you're absolutely right, and I like what you said about fixing bugs at the beginning of a life project than holding on to an end of one. I agree, the future in CS is going to be exciting. Its definitely going in the right direction in the areas you mentioned. I've always thought integrating CS with DNN border-lined extreme nuttiness personally, but there are a lot of people who think this is an excellent idea. I know there's some good action in that regard at http://www.danbartels.com/.

5/12/2005 8:17:14 AM Permalink

Your criticism is the first piece of advice Dare Obasanjo gave me AFTER I had made the announcement. Trust me, it is very constructive and well received criticism. As this is the first project I've started, I intended the announcement as a means to get some devs on board. I probably should have phrased it as such "Announcement: A Request For Developers..." or some such.

In any case, the hoopla will die down. People will forget, and then we'll re-announce Subtext with an actual release.

Phil Haack |

5/12/2005 8:19:31 AM Permalink

Nah, they won't forget, Phil. They won't care. They'll just be thinking that you're doing something cool! Don't worry about it for a second. Thanks for your comments.

Dave Burke : Freelance .NET Web Developer specializing in Online Communities

Thoughts on some-other-dotText

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