OPML Editor Documentation 
What is OPML and the OPML Editor?
| | OPML stands for Outline Processor Markup Language. It is a language that lets you outline. |
| | The OPML Editor lets you edit OPML files, and do a lot of other things too. It is based on an engine called Frontier, which is open source, but was originally developed by UserLand Software. |
| | The OPML Editor lets you run a weblog, read RSS news, build link directories, communicate in groups and contains a powerful engine underneath it. |
Registration
| | When you download the OPML Editor, you are asked to register for the opml.org Community server. This may seem slightly odd considering that it's an editor. |
| | But the Community server unlocks the key to the OPML Editor. It enables you to post your outlines online, to run an OPML weblog and use the Instant Outliner. |
| | To register, simply fill in the form which loads when you start OPML. |
Making an Outline
| | Click New in the File menu or tap Ctrl + N / Cmd + N (Windows / Mac). This will launch a new empty outline. |
| | Start typing. Every time you hit Enter, you'll get a new node. |
| | These nodes let you store material in an outline. For instance, you could have an outline like the one below... |
| | By expanding it you see new items below it. |
| | To move nodes to the left and right, use Tab and Shift-Tab. Experiment with this, and you can see how it works. |
| | If you want to move nodes up and down, you can use Ctrl + U / Cmd + U (to move up) and Ctrl + D / Cmd + D (to move down). |
Saving an Outline
| | You can save your Outline in the same way that you would any other file. But where you save it does different things. |
| | If you just save it in an ordinary place on your hard drive, nothing happens. |
| | But try saving it in to C:My DocumentsOPMLwww (on Windows) or ~/OPML/www (on Macintosh). |
| | This will then transfer your file up on to the Internet. |
| | You can then find the OPML file's location by choosing "Get Outline URL" from the Community menu. |
Including an Outline in another Outline
| | This is where OPML gets really powerful. You can make an outline and then put it in another outline. This is how OPML directories are formed. |
| | I have an outline called Philosophy. It contains links to web pages about Philosophy. I try and keep it up to date. |
| | Let us say that you wished to include my Philosophy outline in to your Outline about 'Stuff You Like'. |
| | Make a node and call it 'Philosophy'. |
| | Then right-click on the triangle next to the node and choose 'Add Link' |
| | Then type in "http://hosting.opml.org/tommorris/links/philosophy.opml" (without the quotation marks). Then hit OK. You have now included my file within yours. It dynamically updates. |
| | Now double click on the triangle. The OPML Editor will now load, automatically, the contents of my Philosophy outline and show them to you within your own outline. |
| | The benefits of this is obvious. You can now include other people's work in your own. In link directories, such as Indie Podder and the OPML Community Directory, directories of links are included within each other to form one cohesive directory. |
| | Similarly, one can structure an index of all your outlines this way. With the Instant Outliner (which we will discuss later), this can give people an easy way of keeping track of what you are up to. |
Hoisting
| | If you've got a large outline, it's sometimes quite useful to see only a bit of it. This is where Hoist comes in. In the Outliner menu, there is an option called Hoist. |
| | Choose a node with children, click on it, then Hoist it. It's children are now promoted to top-level items. This means you can work on just that view of the Outline. |
| | To see the rest of the Outline, simply choose De-Hoist or De-Hoist All from the Outliner menu. |
Your OPML Weblog
| | The OPML Editor, combined with the Community server, lets you run a weblog. |
| | To edit your weblog, go to the Community menu, then choose Your OPML Weblog, then click "Open today's outline" |
| | You will see a blank outline here. This is the outline for today. |
| | Each node is an entry in your weblog. Just type and it's an entry. |
| | The style of your weblog, by default, is similar to that of Scripting News, Dave Winer's weblog. |
| | If you want to have an entry with a title, you simply type the title in and then start typing the paragraphs in as child nodes. |
| | A good bit of practice for this is to have short posts without titles, and long posts titled at the bottom of the file. Put each new link at the top, and then drop a longer titled entry in at the bottom. I do this, as does Dave. |
| | Another piece of practice that is worth remembering is to keep a file called Draft Posts.opml, in which you can keep posts that you are writing. Then when you are ready to post them, you simply cut and paste them in to your daily outline. |
| | Once you have prepared an entry, you just click 'Save'. This saves the day's outline and, within a few seconds, will transmit that outline up on to the Community server. |
| | Then you click 'Build RSS' when you are absolutely sure, and the OPML Editor will make you an RSS file which will promptly be uploaded to the Community server. The two are handled differently, since you may want to go on to your weblog to double check your entry before you start transmitting your entry. |
Blogging and Categories
| | You can apply categories to your weblog entries. |
| | First you need some categories. In the blogging interface, click Categories. |
| | Enter some categories, then hit Save and Rebuild. The former saves the Categories OPML file. The latter builds a new menu of categories. |
| | Go back to your daily blog outline. Choose a node, right click and choose Categories. Now choose a Category from the list. Now when you save this entry, it will include category information in the RSS feed. |
Advanced Blogging
| | You may wish to change the header graphic for your blog. Make yourself a graphic of the appropriate size, save it to your hard drive, and then choose "Change header graphic" from the Community > Your OPML Weblog menu. Find the file, and it'll be uploaded. |
| | You can change the title and copyright details of your blog by choosing "Blog name/copyright" from Community > Your OPML Weblog. |
| | If you choose "Open blogroll" from Community > Your OPML Weblog, you can add links to your blogroll. The first level of nodes contains the titles for the sections of your blogroll, and the second level contains the links themselves. Just right click on the entry, choose "Add Link" and type in the URL of the weblog you wish to link to. |
| | "Days on home page" in Community > Your OPML Weblog lets you change the number of days that your blog contains. I think that about five is the right amount, but you may think differently. |
| | "Open template" in Community > Your OPML Weblog lets you edit the template for your weblog. It's in standard HTML with some placeholders. Just like editing a Blogger, Movable Type or WordPress template, really. |
Instant Outline
| | The Instant Outliner can produce a "coffee mug" - this is an image link which you can put on your blog and other pages which links to your OPML file in a way that lets others load it easily. To get the coffee mug, choose "OPML Coffee Mug" from the Community > Instant Outliner menu. |
Buddies
| | You can subscribe to OPML files by choosing "Subscribe" from the Instant Outliner menu, which lets you subscribe to OPML files. |
| | Open your Buddies up from the Instant Outliner menu to see a list of them. |
| | You can choose how you are notified of updates in the Preferences option in the Instant Outliner menu. |
OPML Conversions
| | OPML can come in different formats. The Community menu has options to help you convert these formats in to OPML Editor standard. |
| | Support for Bloglines, SharpReader and RSS Bandit are built in to the Editor. |
OPML Directories / Map-a-Domain
| | The OPML Editor Community Server has support for producing links directories. This is done through the Map-A-Domain function in the Community menu. |
| | To do this, you need to have a domain name or subdomain available which you can redirect to the Community IP address. |
| | First, tell your domain name server to redirect your domain or a subdomain to the OPML server at 70.x.x.x |
| | Then find the outline file that you wish to use (which must be in the OPML/www directory), choose Map A Domain from the Community menu and then type in the relevant details. |
| | Your domain name will be mapped very quickly - within the space of a few minutes |
| | When you go to your domain, you can refresh the contents of it by clicking 'refresh' at the bottom of the page - this will refresh the OPML on which your directory is based. |
Keeping OPML Editor up-to-date
| | Updates to the OPML Editor are distributed automatically via the in-built software update routine. Simply launching the Editor will prompt you to update it every so often. If you wish to update the code manually, choose "Get Latest Code" from the Community menu. |
| | Tools can often be updated by choosing "Get Latest Code" from the Tools menu (newsRiver.root supports this). |
Save me from myself!
| | If you mess up your opml.root file (equivalent to the Windows Registry), then you can get a fresh copy by choosing "Update opml.root" from the File menu. |
NewsRiver
| | NewsRiver is a powerful RSS news reader that supports the River of News type of aggregation. |
| | NewsRiver can be obtained from the OPML Editor Support website here. You simply download newsRiver.root in to your "Guest Databases/apps/Tools" folder, and restart the Editor. |
| | The commands to control newsRiver are in the Tools > NewsRiver menu. |
| | When you first use NewsRiver, you are automatically subscribed to a handful of popular news and weblog feeds. To update these, click "Do Scan Now" from the NewsRiver menu. This will grab the latest headlines from those feeds. |
| | To view these, choose "View News" from the menu. This will open up a browser window containing all these news feeds. |
| | In the browser, you can do a number of things. The tickboxes on the left let you select headlines for deletion. You can then delete them at the bottom. You do not have to delete everything - when they reach the bottom of the page, they'll drop off eventually. |
| | On the right hand side, there are buttons that say "POST". If you click on this, it'll drop the headline in to a new entry on today's weblog outline. The rest of the interface is pretty self-evident. |
| | There are a number of rather pesky bugs in NewsRiver at the moment. |