Project Gilgamesh

IDEoblogy

From early on, it occurred to me that this blog could form an informal basis to documentation for the project, and I'm planning to include an export of the blog along with any distributed documentation.

Now, dsuspense has noted a possible convergence between IDE and Blog. (Apparently after reading Russell Beattie's entry on blogging getting in the way of actually coding. Oh how I know that feeling! But a blogging IDE could really help make blogging a seamless, managed, integrated activity.)

I've had a few thoughts about how a blogging plugin could work:

• Within the Code window you decide to blog (shortcut key, button etc.)
• A blog editor comes up allowing you to choose the topic of your blog (Selected code fragment, this method, this class/file, whole project).
• You can choose a working title, and make a few notes.
• A link to this blog fragment is visible in the margin of the fragment/ method/class/file, and you can edit at any time.
• When you are ready to publish, you can view all the current fragments, and you may choose to collate them (you could sort fragments about a particular class together for example).
• You can then edit the entire entry, and post.
• Appropriate comments with a permalink to the resulting post will be added at the relevant places.
• Presumably, the text you've submitted would be searched for Class/method names, which you could prompt to update as well (if you've mentioned them more than tangentially - I guess this would have to be a manual choice?)

The blog will also be stored locally, and can be accessed easily and integrated into other working routines. For example:

• Blogs for a particular method can be instantly brought up (compare IDEA's Ctrl-Q for quick Javadoc).
• Automated code review can check for code coverage in the blog. "Have I written about class Foo yet?"

As the IDE is unlikely to be the only blogging tool used, it would have to be able to refresh itself from an RSS feed, scan entries, and import the relevant ones into the local database (and add comments/links in the code). This will have a few side effects:

• When working on a project, you could import multiple RSS feeds so that various contributor's comments on the code get imported automatically.
• Set java.blogs as an RSS feed and use it as a vanity agent to see if anyone else is talking about you ;->

Gone coding...

I'll be away from this blog for maybe a week or so, as I'm a) busy, and b) actually writing some code in whatever time I've got left.

Messages of support gratefully received to gilgamesh at osfameron dot abelgratis dot co dot uk, or as comments here!

Movable Type CSS

I'm trying to get rid of the absolute positioning of the links bar and the main content, by having them both just float into the right place.

It's not working though. It's now broken (the navigation bars underneath the content). Grrrr. Any hints?