I know it's been a while since I've last posted anything on this blog, but I've got something really cool to share...
I'm usually not one that gets too involved with too much software by submitting bug reports and being whiney and cry about features that I think are missing or to diss software outright without giving it a chance (sorry Microsoft you've had your chances and missed them all! -- Not a big fan)
But I digress...
As you might already have noticed I'm a fairly large fan of MarsEdit, the amazing Mac blog publishing application... and I made a feature request of a sort on the MarsEdit forum.
The request was due to having a certain setting in Blogger that I had that wasn't really average, and was messing up how Blogger and MarsEdit interacted causing the format of my posts to get a little messed up.
Specifically my problem was:
... the line break tags disappear and are substituted with a hard return when the posts are imported into MarsEdit.
I have Blogger's "Convert line breaks" setting (in Settings > Formatting) set as "No" to take advantage of more advanced layout options that can be achieved through MarsEdit.
I can't remember what release I noticed they started to disappear, but I've been secretly hoping somehow it'd get fixed...
And maybe now that I've mentioned this hopefully it will be sooner!
[The developer] probably automatically assume[s] that Blogger blogs won't have that option on, and to keep Blogger from adding line break tags after every line - even if there is already a line break tag at the end of the line... which was a Blogger integration bug that was in one of the earlier releases of MarsEdit as I recall.
And having to redo the formatting every time I wanted to update a post or view and copy a section from one post to another was a little annoying... so I provided my point-of-view to the developer of MarsEdit, Daniel Jalkut through the MarsEdit Forum.
I wasn't necessarily expecting a whole lot, just hoping that he might do something to fix it or show me some other way to work with the little inconvenience I was having regarding MarsEdit... It was really no biggie!
He did get back to me on the forum rather quickly with a response and saw that there was something he could do to the app that might help out.
After hearing very little in the meantime, even after a software update that happened a long time ago, I was curious if Daniel already implemented the change or was considering it for a future release.
And as it turns out...
Yes, it's true you can make a difference in the programs you love!
Daniel had implemented a hidden feature in MarsEdit for the ultimate compatibility with Blogger blogs that have the "Convert line breaks" setting set to "No"!
Here's all you have to do:
- Quit MarsEdit if it's open.
- Open Terminal.app on your mac (Application/Utilities/Terminal.app)
- Copy the following:
defaults write com.red-sweater.marsedit DisableBloggerMarkupMassage -bool YES
- Paste that line (one single non-carriage-return line) into the Terminal window
- Then hit the return key
- Open MarsEdit
- Then for each of your Blogger blogs that you have do the following:
- Select the blog so that it's highlighted in blue in the list on the left blog list
- If the blog's Preview Text Filter setting (accessed through the toolbar's "Show Settings" button and in the "Composing" tab for the blog's settings) isn't set to "None", change it to "None"
[click OK after checking &/or changing] - Then when the blog is still selected / highlighted on the left, click on the "Refresh" button in the toolbar (the circular blue arrow)
- See the changes
Now your Blogger blogs - when they're reloaded - will have the <br /> tags intact when opening the Post for Editing, and will also render previews correctly when you select a post.
NOTE: This setting affects all Blogger blogs in MarsEdit, it isn't a blog-specific setting but is universal in that regard... So make sure you have all your Blogger blogs in MarsEdit to have the "Convert line breaks" setting set to "No" when you use this special hidden feature!
It would be cool if someone else can benefit from this new feature too... hey, I know:
Why not let me know if you like this feature or use it by leaving a comment below?!
Also, give tons of thanks to Daniel Jalkut the MarsEdit developer for implementing this new hidden feature!
