Contributing to BloGTK

I was meaning to talk about BloGTK before my previous post on the topic but never quite had the time so here's a quick follow-up to fill in the holes...

At the end of last year I decided it was about time I filled in a scripting gap in my knowledge, namely Python, so set about finding something to code.  I'm also a blogger (D'uh) and have always been frustrated at the lack of a decent off-line client for the Linux desktop.  Enter BloGTK, both a blogging client and written in Python.

Step 1 before thinking any further about contributing or reading any source code is to seek permission from my employer.  I was glad (and surprised) to find getting permission to contribute to open source projects is actually very quick and simple.  A short note to my manager and a couple of days delay later yielded the rather simple response:

Graham

Approved

Regards, ...

BloGTK didn't do a couple of things I consider essential for my blogging purposes, the main one being support for uploading and embedding images.  I wrote and submitted a couple of patches to the project, learning a lot about Python along the way.  The latest development snapshot of BloGTK (which will probably become version 2.1) includes support for uploading to Picasa and Flickr.  If you went looking for Flickr support as a result of my previous post then you'll either have to grab the development code early or wait a while until the release of the 2.1 version.  In the mean time I'll do battle with Flickr to find out why they think BloGTK is a personal web site or gallery in order to publicise the App through the App Garden.