Nov
Todd Kulesza talks about Drivel
Drivel is a GNOME client that supports several blogging software such as MovableType, Blogger, LiveJournal, WordPress and several others. It’s purpose, at first sight, appears to be increasing the life expectancy of your mouse, by reducing the number of clicks you normally need to make before making new entries to your blog.
While, this hardly seems reason enough to learn and use a new software, Drivel has other uses as well. It infact, as Todd Kulesza, author of Drivel claims, offers certain functionalities that are not available through the browser interface of several blogging platforms. Here, he answers all the questions I put to him.
Why did you start Drivel?
Todd: Drivel began as a final project for a high school computer science class. It was originally a Windows application built on GTK+. After graduation, I decided to port it to the then-brand-new GNOME 2 framework.
Can you quickly run us through Drivel’s features?
Todd: As of Drivel 2.0, supported features include posting to LiveJournal, MovableType, Blogger, Advogato, and Atom journals. Other blogs implementing one of these APIs are also supported, such as WordPress and Drupal. Drivel can also edit or delete previous posts. In the case of LiveJournal, security groups and Friend management features are included, plus lots of LiveJournal-only meta data. All journal types benefit from built-in spell checking and HTML syntax highlighting, the ability to save incomplete entries as drafts, and an optional Technorati ping following entry updates.
How many feature requests do you get on average? Are they asking for support for other blogging tools or for improvements?
Todd: We usually get one or two new feature requests per month. These are nearly always for improvements to existing system support — all of the major blogging platforms are covered at this point.
Why would any one want to use a blog client? Is it just to reduce the number of clicks one normally would make posting through the
blog’s browser interface?
Todd: Ease of use is a big reason. Things like spell-checking and syntax highlighting were (and in some still remain) unavailable through web interfaces. For many people, having a small tool running on their desktop is far more convenient as against navigating to a website to create posts.
What other translations are targetted for the next release?
Todd: Translations are handled by the GNOME translation team. The credit is all theirs–I just send an e-mail to the i18n list once the development has stabilized and the strings are frozen. As such, I can’t say when new translations will be added or existing translations updated.
Are you working on integrating a ’selecting multiple categories’ option?
Todd: Yeah, this is one of the areas I’m targeting for 2.2. First, though, the network system is being moved from libcurl to libsoup. This makes the XML-RPC and SOAP handling *much* simpler, but the port is taking some time. It will also eliminate the last non-GNOME library which Drivel depends on, making it fit nicely into the general GNOME platform.
Drivel is definetely a nice tool to have around. I find it addictive. Not like people find the PlayStation addictive. But in a more sane manner 
Which is to say, that having a tool on my desktop does make life easier. You wouldn’t use meebo to chat with friends. You’d prefer a dektop application.
Give Drivel a try and you’ll know just how handy it is. Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us Todd. We wish you all the best for Drivel and other projects.
