What's a good app for blogging?

Question

A friend of mine recently converted from Windows to Linux and has been looking for a good app to replace Windows Livewriter. From talking to him it sounds like handling images is the main feature he is looking for.

Are there any good apps for this? Switching blog engines isn't really an option for him, so it needs to be a standalone app or a web app that generates html that he could cut and paste.

I myself use Markdown, but please no 'just write html', 'just write markdown', 'just write xml and use a custom xslt transform' type answers.

EDIT: I realized I've probably been a bit too restrictive in answer choices here. Please give your suggestions for a solution. Regardless of whether they meet my friends particular needs, they might meet someone else's needs.

Answer 1

As a Blogger user who has been repeatedly burned by Blogger's web editor, I find myself using Tomboy to draft my blogs, and then I use the Tomboy Blogposter add-in to upload the blog as a draft, and make any necessary tweaks. This is nice because I'm already a heavy Tomboy user so drafting blog posts in a Tomboy note feels natural. Also, the add-in works on Windows and Mac, too.

Depending on your style, you may find the need to make these tweaks after uploading a deal-breaker:

• Creating proper hyperlinks (Tomboy does not let you link arbitrary text to arbitrary URLs)
• Adding images (Tomboy does not have built-in image support)
• Finally, making whatever style tweaks seem necessary, though for the most part I am very satisfied with the HTML uploaded by the Blogposter add-in

The Blogposter add-in does not ship with Tomboy, but is packaged for most popular distros, and also available in source and binary form from the developer's website (in which case installation is as easy as dropping the .dll file into ~/.config/tomboy/addins).

The add-in seems to support most popular blogging platforms. From the site:

Tomboy Blogposter is a Tomboy plugin to post notes to a blog from for instance Wordpress, Blogger or LiveJournal, or (hopefully) any other AtomPub enabled website.

Answer 2

I really like Wordpress' post editor. If you are not using Wordpress you can always create a new post in Wordpress, make all kinds of editing you need, then copy and use the HTML without publishing the post. For this you can go with a free wordpress.com account :D

It also looks like the only thing you need is a WYSIWYG HTML editor, a little googling might be good. Try this online html editor, for example.

Answer 3

BloGTK is a little old but I like its simplicity

Answer 4

Here is an article showing several blog publishing client tools for Linux. However I host a wordpress blog and I haven't seen a better blogging platform anywhere as far as ease of use and extensibility. You can also get them freely hosted by wordpress.

Answer 5

Jaws is a Framework and Content Management System for building dynamic web sites. It aims to be User Friendly giving ease of use and lots of ways to customize web sites, but at the same time is Developer Friendly, it offers a simple and powerful framework to hack your own modules.

Jaws Project Site

Answer 6

On KDE there is the Blogilo application. I've only used it a little bit, but it supports uploading to the major blog engines.