Blosxom's stitch-the-template-and-content-together code is pretty
nasty. Well, it's simple up to the point when one tries to use a fancy
interpolation (substitution) engine to, say, implement a schmick
img tag. RSS's not-invented-here-edness purportedly
disallows HTML in the feed, but in practice it appears that's fine
provided all the tags are suitably HTML armoured, which was the hoop
that Blosxom was dutifully leaping through. I just tweaked the main
script so that some interpolation occurs before the escaping, and the same
again and some more after. Voila, with ugliness comes images. Yes, this sort
of thing makes one yearn for a mainstream blogging engine.
While I'm ranting I've gotta say perl's approach of making everything
magical wears thin fast. I want predictability, and while I accept that API
docs are written to be read I don't appreciate having to read
perlsyn and perlop (and perlre)
manpages while doing simple imperative programming. How about: small
language, verdant libraries instead of here's fifteen ways to write
an enumerator? The great ideas in the language and fantastic libraries
are heavily obfuscated by noise, and I don't believe it's possible to write
robust perl applications — aspect-oriented programming has nothing
on this for spaghetti. Any sane person looking at the perlsec
manpage must surely agree with me — tainting supposedly
works provided one doesn't defeat it, by omission or commission. Mutter,
mutter.
Is it just my Safari that struggles with RSS feeds? Those bugs have been there for years now.