Weirdly enough, I think I’d be more likely to move my whole blogging experience to Micro.blog from Blot if @danielpunkass@mastodon.social’s MarsEdit came to iOS. Text files synced with Dropbox are my whole blogging UI with Blot, but that basically means 1Writer & iA Writer are my blogging apps. MarsEdit le... jb.heydingus.net

@jarrod I may have to look into this, but how are you using MArsEdit for your Blot blog? @DonnyDavis has a nifty Drafts action that lets you edit published posts on Micro.blog. He is currently updating it to adjust it for Drafts v40's different tag structure.

@jarrod If you’re not opposed to the subscription, Ulysses can also publish and edit Micro.blog posts.

@pratik Oh, I'm not using MarsEdit with Blot. Everything is done with regular text files/dropbox through iA Writer on Mac and 1Writer on iOS. But MarsEdit on Mac gives a close enough approximation of that experience, that I'd consider it for my main blog...but it's not there on iOS.

I've thought about doing the Drafts thing...but I couldn't do without 2-way sync (if I DID edit on the web), and Drafts is, well, drafts for me. I like the separation of it as a scratchpad where things start, but not where they end.

@pimoore I've tried Ulysses, and it just didn't click for me. That, plus the subscription, keeps me away from it. If I did try again though...do you know if it does 2-way sync? If I edit a post on the web, will it be reflected in Ulysses?

@jarrod @pimoore I do start and keep text in Drafts. Perhaps I might be one of the few people. I've asked this before but perhaps need to export my notes to plain-text format at regular intervals.

@pratik I love having the ability to post to MB from Drafts, and do often. But I’d feel better if the “source of truth” were elsewhere, ideally as a local text file that I could edit from anywhere. Thus, Blot. But having two places to post is extra mental overhead that I’m starting to find cumbersome. I gaze jealously over at @manton’s streamlined approach of having one domain and one place for everything.

@jarrod I don’t believe the sync is 2-way, as it’s using a posting API as opposed to a file share. I never actually tested this though, so I’m happy to be proven wrong. ;) That said, I love the Ulysses workflow for Micro.blog—images especially are brilliantly simple—and having it as a single point of truth for publishing and editing makes the subscription worth it for me.

@jarrod Blot is indeed the perfect place when it comes to posting and having a local text file. I try to (manually) cross-post most longform posts to Blot but I need to do it more regularly.

@jarrod @pratik Sometimes I’m tempted to build a “folder of text files” sync, but this is probably better handled in a specialized app. Something like MarsEdit but that could also watch a folder and publish changes.

@pratik @jarrod I use Ulysses for long form posts, but Drafts for micro posts. The latter are more ephemeral in my mind, so I don’t feel the need to keep a local copy of them. Once I publish them through Drafts they get deleted.

@jarrod iA Writer on Mac and iOS can post to Micro.blog. I do a lot of my long form posts that way.

@pimoore Your enthusiasm for it is inching me toward giving it another shot! 🙂 I'm glad you're so happy with the flow.

@pratik I've been so happy with Blot since I moved there last year. I'm able to do just the right amount of tinkering, and I can understand and see how it all works. But having the two separate places...it seems superfluous now that I'm settling into my site just being a personal blog and waning on aspirations of it being the next Six Colors or Daring Fireball.

All that, coupled with the movement around ActivityPub gluing together the social web... shit, I've got Micro.blog right here that can do it all! Why muck it up trying to superficially separate things out?

I feel a blog post coming on...

@manton Oh man, I'd be all over that! (And happy to support it if you went down that route. 😉) Would the current underpinnings of Micro.blog support something like that if you decided it was out of your scope to build, but an industrious third-party wanted to give it a shot?

@pimoore Hmmm...now there's a thought. Perhaps an acceptable stopgap at least.

@jsonbecker It's a couple-step process, right? iA will send it to MB as a draft but then you have to go through the web interface to actually publish? Not that that's terribly cumbersome. Does iA let you update posts after they're published like Ulysses? It'd be nice to stay with iA since I'm already used to making all my edits in that app.

@jarrod yeah it creates it as draft (but then will open that draft in the browser for you to press publish).

You cannot edit after the fact-- it's not meant to be a two-way sync manager. But I don't mind that-- that's what MarsEdit is for later when I'm on my Mac or doing "management". To me, the iAWriter integration = I can write longer posts on my iOS devices very comfortably.

@jarrod I am much more comfortable with "just" having the MarsEdit stuff on Mac than I am with Ulysses having "sort of markdown"

@jsonbecker Sounds like I have some experimentation to do. Thanks for sharing!

@jarrod @jsonbecker The "sort of markdown" is what turned me away from Ulysses. It's an excellent writing app, though.

@jarrod I'm a Ulysses user... love it, but still contemplating iA Writer for its ultimate simplicity. Big fan of iA Presenter...

@jsonbecker didn't know that... does it support Ghost?

@jarrod If you work with images or photos a lot in your posts, Ulysses handles them with aplomb. You can literally drag and drop them right into the post, enter details such as alt text/description, and they will be automagically uploaded to Micro.blog when you publish. Alternatively, you can use Mimi to upload the image(s) and paste the links into Ulysses (or Drafts) and write the post around them. The first option is definitely more frictionless.

@manton @jarrod @pratik That would be a really great idea! Just be sure to have it available in other apps too, since some of us don't have a Mac to use MarsEdit. ;)

@jarrod Yes, I don’t see why something like that couldn’t be built with the current API.

@manton Coolcoolcool. Always fun to dream of the possibilities.

@gr36 I do most of my short posts with the API! It’s a great option. I’m just a bit fussy about the longer stuff and wanting to be able to have a canonical offline copy that I can edit/update with two-way sync.

@numericcitizen yes it does. Ghost, Micro.blog, Micropub, Medium, and Wordpress are supported.

@jsonbecker consider me interested to explore (again) iA Writer, then.

@jsonbecker @pimoore I like how easy it is to drag an image into Ulysses, but I wish it would allow for a resize. Blogging from the road on my iPad is sometimes cumbersome because it wants to upload full resolution. I am completely foiled at trying to incorporate an image into an IA Writer document.

@bnmnet It actually does. If you tap on the image after dropping it in place and swipe up, you'll see a "More…" button. Tap that and it opens up a menu where you can enter caption, alt text, and also the size.

@pimoore I finally got it to work after restarting my iPad. I would tap on insert image, but it would not bring up the photo selector. working now. IA doesn't resize the image either. Waiting to help @danielpunkass beta test the iPad version of MarsEdit 😀

@pimoore OMG I just realized you were talking about Ulysses... That must be a relatively new feature as I had some conversation with Ulysses support a year or more ago, and they said it wasn't supported. I wonder if it actually resizes the file or if it just sets the width on the img tag??

@bnmnetp It does set the dimensions in the img tag, but I’m not sure if it performs the physical resize. My guess is no, but I’ve never actually tested or verified this—my curiosity is piqued.

@bnmnetp @danielpunkass I’ll sign up for that. 👍🏻