I am currently looking for a desktop blogging software for Linux. The known ones like BloGtk, Drivel or the Gnome tool could not really convince me much.
The lack of a good desktop blogging tool for Linux seems not to be only an issue for me. Just while I was searching for new tools I stumbled upon the following posts:
- Five Desktop Blog Editors for GNU/Linux Users
- Five More Desktop Blog Editors for GNU/Linux Users
- Linux Blogging Sucks
During my short period with Windows Vista on my Siemens Amilo si1520 I had the chance to try Windows Live Writer, which I hate to say, was the best desktop blogging software I have used so far. It worked well with my blog and even showed me the blog posts within the layout of my blog while writing them.
However, I do not really need this gimmick (but would be nice), but I have a few requirements for a desktop blogging software:
- Offline support: I want to be able to write my blog posts, while I am not connected to the web and save the drafts. Once I am online I want to be able to publish them to the server.
- It MUST support categories and syncronize them with the server. The software must be able to create new categories.
- It should support the possibility to publish a post at a specific time.
I am writing I have tried to writ this blog post with a software called QTM. It looks promising, but there are a lot of things to improve. Most important issue: I was not able to publish my post to the server (!?). Additionally, there is no WYSIWYG-Editing, which is not a major problem. However, the code view is very basic (no highlighting), etc. The preview does not display unordered lists, too. Unfortunately it is also not possible to add new categories, which makes the software not very convenient. At least I can work on the articles off-line. The interface looks pretty improvised, too. Especially the icons are not very selfexplanatory, e.g. the symbol for setting a link.
My previous post “Bidirectional syncronization between Google Calendar and Mozilla Thunderbird” was written with a Firefox-Plugin called “Deepest Sender“. From the first test I prefer Deepest Sender over Scribefire. However, as I did not manage to publish this post with QTM I have used Scribefire for this post. You can add new categories (called tags), you can see older posts and you can save your post as a note. Not sure if this will totally convince me. I am missing for example the possibility to upload an article which should be published only later (at a specified time).
During the next few weeks I will test many different tools, just to decide which one fits best for me.
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