Drivel Sources
Over the past few days I’ve been posting on using Drivel and other offline blog tools see here and here and I commented that there were a few things missing from Drivel that I would like. Last night I decided to put my money where my mouth is and download the sources and take a peek. Unfortunately modifying the sources is probably a bit above my pay grade so to speak - I don’t think I’ll be able to make the changes I want, however being able to review the source code of an app is a great feature of Linux and open source in general. In order to more completely work through the code, I installed both Anjuta which is a development IDE and the Glade Interface Designer. Anjuta is totally optional if you don’t intend on building - you can view the sources in Gedit or Kate, etc. The Glad Interface Designer is what was used by the author to develop the forms, etc. so it’s pretty much necessary to view all of the form designs.
Here’s what I found out. First, some of the things that I am looking for are sort of available but only if you are using LiveJournal. The main form does have inputs for Music, moods, etc. but they are enabled for LiveJournal only. I’m sure there’s a reason for this, probably due to the LiveJournal api’s or something. The second thing I found out is the programmers have a nice sense of humor! From journal.c:
/* if there is no username, throw a fit */
else if (!dc->user->username || !strcmp (dc->user->username, “”))
As I was browsing the sources that made me laugh!
In any case, I may mess around a bit with the sources and see what I can do to make it better for me but even if I can’t/don’t - having the power to review the entire application design is awesome. Imagine being able to do this with Microsoft Office or Windows!
