aR frequently asked questions
Last updated: 2/2/04; 2:31:11 PM by MB
General
Can I use activeRenderer without Radio ?
I'm not sure 'using' is the proper term yet, but if you are a programmer, there are now activeRenderer APIs available, both REST and XML-RPC, so that you may render OPML outlines and RSS feeds from other languages such as Perl, PHP, Python, Java or Javascript.
I hope I'll soon be able to publish tutorials on how to use activeRenderer from other publishing environment, depending on the feedback I get from web developers.
How much does activeRenderer cost ?
The good news is activeRenderer is free, as in $0.00.
Upcoming versions may have subscription based modules, the usage of which will be restricted to subscribers, paying a modest yearly fee.
How do I register activeRenderer ?
First, if you don't have one already, you need to obtain a serial number from aR's registration service.
Registration is free and fast. I just want to have an idea of how many people are using this tool.
Correction, I'm very sorry to admit that registration these days is sometimes a hassle :-/ We're moving the service from its current residence in Northern Italy to Precision IT Management server room in NYC, where I hope I will be able to provide a simpler and more reliable service.
I apologize to the victims of the serial invalid serial number problem.
The registration service emails you aR's serial number, so please provide a valid email address.
Then, enter (or paste) the serial number in aR's registration form, and click Save.
The registration form is displayed in a 'pop-under' window each time you start Radio, until you have registered your copy of activeRenderer.
You can also access the registration page from aR's browser page, or by selecting the Tools / activeRenderer / Register... menu in Radio.
When your copy of aR is registered, the Registration page simply displays your serial number.
How do I check activeRenderer's current version ?
In your browser, aR's currently installed version is displayed on Radio's desktop website page, in the status center.
You may also see it displayed in the activeRenderer paragraph of Radio's Tools page
Within the Radio application, you can select the Tools / activeRenderer / About menu.
Last, hovering the mouse cursor on any site displaying the activeRenderer tile logo or 'how this works' mention will display the version of activeRenderer used to publish that site.
What is the latest version and where can I get it ?
Latest available version is 2.0.3.
Download it by following these instructions.
Operation
How do I access activeRenderer's Browser ?
With the Radio application in the foreground, select the Tools / activeRenderer / Browser... menu.
Or, from your weblog's local home page, locate the StatusCenter section in the right sidebar, and click the activeRenderer Tool link.
How do I access activeRenderer's Preferences ?
With the Radio application in the foreground, select the Tools / activeRenderer / Preferences... menu.
There is also a link to preferences in activeRenderer's browser top menu.
How do I disable auto-update ?
In activeRenderer's Preferences page, clear the "Update activeRenderer automatically at startup." checkbox, then click Save.
auto-update won't work anyway if your copy of aR is not registered.
How do I get rid of activeRenderer ?
Had enough? activeRenderer tries to disappear gracefully which is easier said than done :-)
Basically, all you have to do is quit Radio, then pull the activeRenderer.root file out of Radio's Tools folder.
That's it. It's that easy.
And the result should be :
Locally customized activeRenderer templates are archived in the activeRender subfolder of the Radio application folder.
activeRenderer.root is gone from Radio's Tools folder.
The non outlined templates, which were archived at the time of aR's installation if you selected either outline styles for your weblog, are restored.
The Browser option disappears from the top menu in Radio's desktop website page.
The www/activeRenderer folder is removed.
The www/outlines and www/opml folder stay, to avoid any broken links on the public site.
What is auto-upstream ?
When you start Radio with activeRenderer in your Tools directory, aR tries to locate your 'instant outline' opml file in www/instantOutliner and duplicates it in www/outlines for upstreaming as dynamic HTML.
You can disable auto-upstreaming by unchecking the 'Upstream instant outline at startup' preference in aR's Preferences page.
What is outline mirroring ?
When auto-mirror is checked in aR's preferences, any outline saved from Radio's outliner into the outlines folder or one of its subfolders is automatically copied in the opml folder hierarchy, and vice versa.
Any file saved under the outlines folder hierarchy is upstreamed to the public site as a dynamic HTML page.
Where as files saved under opml are upstreamed to the public site in their native OPML format.
Checking the mirroring preference is a convenient way to keep outlines on the public site in both formats.
The storyBox macro creates a link to the OPML version from the HTML rendered page.
Can I publish outlines to separate public sites ?
...Needless to say from the same Radio installation ?
The answer is yes, and probably requires a dedicated tutorial.
Here are the main steps :
You need to create a Radio category for each public site you want to publish outlines to.
In each category's folder, create a #upstream.xml file with the parameters for your upstream method.
The trick is to figure out how to store the password :-)
Post an item to each of these new categories and check Radio's events log to make sure that upstreaming works as planned.
Quit and restart Radio: activeRenderer will create activeRenderer, outlines and opml subfolders for each category folder upstreamed to a site different from the main weblog site.
All you need now is save outlines to those folders.
Outlining weblogs
Can I use activeRenderer without the outlined weblog style ?
You sure can.
In its default setting, aR works as a simple OPML outline renderer.
You need to actually check the outlined weblog style preferences in aR's Preferences page to activate any of the two outlined styles.
I've selected the 'Outline publication dates' rendering mode, can I get rid of the 'Latest' widget ?
Sure, just uncheck the 'Display Latest widget' option in aR's preferences.
You may also move the daySwitch macro call somewhere else in the home template file #homeTemplate.txt.
How do I make liveTopics work with activeRenderer's outlined weblog style ?
liveTopics packs a number of post level macros which must be manually inserted in the #itemTemplate.txt file in www.
As of early July, these macros were liveTopics, liveTopicsGoogleBug and liveTopicsGoogleJazz, but Matt has kept improving liveTopics since.
Refer to liveTopics's documentation macros reference for more details, in the Installation / Configuration section.
If your main item template already has any of these macros, and you then select aR's extreme outline style presentation, you will temporarily loose the liveTopics macros.
aR replaces your main item template in www with its own outlined style #itemTemplate.txt.
This new template does not include any of liveTopics macros as a default.
All is not lost though, since aR thoughtfully backed up your original #itemTemplate.txt file in www/activeRenderer/local/backup.
What you should do is copy the liveTopics macro calls from your original template, and paste them back into the new outlined template.
When modifying the new outline template in this simple way, remember to increment the version number at the top of the template to some high value (typically over 100). This has 3 benefits :
Your custom template will not be automatically overwritten if a newer version of the template is delivered as part of aR's auto-update feature.
If you go back to a non outlined style, your custom #itemTemplate.txt file will be saved in www/activeRenderer/local/backup/custom, and it will be used again instead of aR's default if you decide to activate the extreme outline style later.
If you decide to uninstal aR completely, your custom #itemTemplate.txt file will be archived to the newly created activeRenderer folder in Radio's application folder.
Troubleshooting
My home page displays [Macro error: Can't evaluate the expression because the name "wedgeTitle" hasn't been defined.] everywhere - Help !
You're a victim of the no longer mysterious #prefs.txt update bug, that I now have eradicated.
The cure is simple :
Open the #prefs.txt file you will find in Radio's www folder with a text editor.
Remove any blank line you find between the first line and the next non blank one.
Save the result, then republish your home page (Radio / Publish / Weblog Home Page menu in Radio).
Just in case, manually update aR to the latest available version (Tools / activeRenderer / Update menu).
The problem came from activeRendererSuite.utils.checkPrefs.
Versions of this code modified on July 31st or later are safe.
I'm running MacOS 9, and aR won't update (or any other odd behaviour). What did I do wrong ?
The only wrong thing you are doing is running MacOS 9.
Do yourself (and Apple Computers) a favor and upgrade to OS X.
Allocate more memory (all you can afford) to the Radio application.
aR's installation and update code is multi-threaded.
MacOS 9 is notoriously lame at handling multithreaded code (among other debilities). Such code requires tons of free memory in this environment.
Besides, versions of activeRenderer prior to 1.3.4 were using a recursive algorithm for rendering, coupled with handling 'outline' Frontier objects.
As my experience of Usertalk grew, I realised this was the worst possible scenario as far as memory usage (or waste rather) and performance were concerned.
Newer versions of aR use a much faster and sparer string based non recursive algorithm.
Yet, do update your system to MacOS X a.s.a.p.
How come accented letters, such as à or ü are not rendered properly on my Macintosh ?
Ok, I cheated, so that the previous line renders fine.
My knowledge of XML character coding conventions is still a little thin, so foreign characters are sometimes rendered in a bizarre way.
It doesn't help that Radio encodes its OPML files in ISO-8859-1, which is not even XML compliant.
But I'm working on accents rendering (I no longer depend on Radio's apparently flawed translations), and will eventually come up with something that works correctly.
In the meantime, I'm entering all accented letters I include into outlines in HTML entity encoded form: à for à, ü for ü. This is not valid XML btw.
