Head on over to the new Zempt domain, zempt.org, and check out the latest version.

Using Zempt to create brand new posts using the default date (which is “right now, whenever you post it”) works fine, every time. And editing previous posts from your blog that were written during the current daylight saving time state also works fine. In other words, if right now it is daylight saving time and the post you are editing was written during daylight saving time, that post’s time will stay the same. By the same token, If it is currently standard time and the post you are editing was written during standard time, again, the post’s time stamp will remain unaffected.

The problem comes when editing a post that was written in a different daylight savings state. Stay with me here.

Let’s suppose you keep your WordPress blog settings up to date … when daylight saving time kicks in, you update your blog’s timezone offset promptly. Same thing when daylight time ends, you change your blog’s timezone offset the same day. Take my blog for example. I am in the Central timezone, so my timezone offsets are -0500 during daylight time and -0600 during standard time.

Now let’s say it is currently NOT daylight saving time (-0600 for me) and my blog settings are up to date and I want to edit a post that was written while daylight time was in effect. The post I am editing has a time stamp of 9:00 am on Oct. 31, 2007 (CDT).

When I download that post and edit it with Zempt, it knows that Oct. 31 was during daylight time. When I save that post back to my blog, Zempt will dutifully convert that time stamp to University Time Coordinate (UTC) based on the post’s date, which means in this example, it will add five hours, which is 2:00 pm on Oct. 31, 2007 (UTC).

Unfortunately, WordPress thinks that any post it receives (regardless of the date) must be -0600 hours off from UTC because that’s what its timezone offset is, so it makes the post’s time 8:00 am on Oct. 31, 2007 (which is UTC minus six hours) so my original post shows that it is an hour earlier than it really was.

If I edit this post again with Zempt, the same thing happens, which means it becomes 7:00 am on Oct. 31, 2007. If you do this enough times, the time stamp gets really screwed up.

A similar problem occurs if you edit a post during daylight time that has an original post date that was standard time, except the post gets pushed forward an hour each time you save it to your blog.

I’ve tested Ecto (on Windows) and it has the same problem.

So here is my question: What should an offline blog writing tool like Zempt do to accommodate this problem? One thing I’ve considered is to have Zempt check the local machine’s current daylight setting vs. the post’s date and either add or subtract the appropriate amount from the post date’s UTC to have it work out but this seems to be a poor workaround. What would be nice is if there was a way through XMLRPC to tell WordPress to use a specified timezone offset for a particular post.

It turns out that if you return the timestamp using XMLRPC in UTC time without specifying it with a “Z” at the end, WordPress assumes you are using local time … for me, that meant that when I edited a post originally published at 7 p.m., the edited version would be published with the UTC time of +0600 hours. WordPress assumed the posting date was 1 a.m. the next day … so now, Zempt correctly appends the “Z” timezone specification on posts with explicit dates. Wahoo! Plus the upload file tools seems to work pretty solidly for me.

If you want the latest version, download the installer.

As I read the web site for this second cyber-squatter, I found all those ridiculous buzzwords that cyber-squatters use to try to justify their worthless existence:

• leveraging online assets
• specializing in content delivery
• search technology
• unparalleled emphasis in regard to current and emerging technologies
• monetization

Well, just for grins I sent an e-mail to them explaining that this domain was used for a non-profit open source project and would they consider relinquishing the domain as a courtesy. They replied two days later with the following:

We would be of interest … You have got to be kidding me.

They say I can get the domain for a one-time price of $1188.00 then in the next paragraph, request payment of $1488.00. Which is it?

Of course, it doesn’t really matter. I have secured the domain zempt.org. I haven’t set up any hosting for it, but I hope to have something up and running in the next month.

UPDATE (2008-03-09 06:52 pm): It looks like it took a bit longer than a month, but today the new site launches at zempt.org.

One of the problems with open source (at least with small open source projects) is that it can take a long time to get updates and patches. Support is provided by just a few people, any web sites devoted to it are hosted and paid for out of love for the project. The people who run the project usually have families and real, paying jobs that preoccupy the bulk of their time. I believe this describes Zempt perfectly.

This post is simply to let you know that Zempt is not completely dead. I have fixed a few more bugs and also made some enhancements. I don’t have access to the list of bugs and/or feature requests that had been posted in the forums over the last year or so since that server is no longer around. Plus, the domain’s status is currently up in the air. Adam Kalsey, one of the creators of the program, asked me a month ago (before the domain expired) if I wanted to take it on since he didn’t want to maintain it any more (the board had been hacked probably over a year ago and no one dealt with it.) At the time I was buried deep in real work and told him I had to pass. Now that I’ve had some time to think about it (and also gotten caught up with other projects) I changed my mind. But it turns out that now that the domain has expired, the registrant wants $80 to get it out of hock. Bummer.

I will probably just let it go until it becomes free again and hope I can get it back at a reasonable cost, but it’s just as likely that some domain spammer is going to grab it.

I still cannot devote much time to Zempt, but I think it is the best offline blogging tool out there for the Windows platform.

If I do manage to regain control of the domain, I’m not sure what I will be able to provide in the way of a support network (forums, bug tracking, etc.) but I don’t want it to just disappear. I guess I still have too much invested to let it die.

So, just to let you see what is on the horizon:

• Previously, if you edited a post (or specified a date/time instead of using current date/time in a new post), it would change the date/time. At least in WordPress (which I use.) This might break other platforms, but I don’t have one of the other platforms to test with.
• You can now resize the Main Entry and Extended Entry windows. This only makes sense to me, because the Main Entry window should be smaller than the Extended Entry.
• The sizes of these entry windows is remembered between Zempt sessions. Plus, it is customizable for each blog.
• You can no longer hide the Main Entry window. It never made sense to me to do this anyway.
• If you turn off the Category drop-down, it really goes away. Under the old version, if you tabbed through the interface, you would see the select box show up when it got focus, even when it was hidden. This was because of the version of wxWindows (2.4.2). Zempt is now built using the current build of wxWindows (2.6.3).

I am trying to make it so that Zempt will remember the status and position of the toolbars between sessions. This is actually quite difficult, because of the tool used to design the floating toolbars. I might try to convert it to a newer (and still maintained) toolbar widget, but this will take some time as well.

So, take heart you Zemptphiles.

• The new version uses fancy floating toolbars. Bill Zeller had started implementing them before I took over. When I inherited the code, the toolbars had some serious focus issues, but they should work swell now.
• Changed the behavior of HOME/END in the edit windows — they now move the caret to the start/end of the current visible line instead of the start/end of the current paragraph.
• Changed the toolbar icons.
• Formatting toolbar buttons are disabled when previewing message.
• Fixed the File->Save / Save As behavior.
• Added this-post-has-been-modified (dirty document) notification to the title bar (an asterisk).
• Changed the preview window so that it uses a template so the preview window can be customized.
• Added a refresh preview window button to enable updates if editing the template in another program.
• Changed the previewing engine to use wxIE to allow for CSS or more advanced HTML/XHTML tags (wxHtmlWindow was very limited.)
• Fixed the problem with missing registry entries (UserAppDir and InstallDir) affecting Zempt. These entries were created by the installer into HKCU and, thusly, didn’t exist for subsequent users who logged onto the machine. We now make system calls to determine these locations if they do not exist in the currently logged-on user’s profile.
• Fixed the time/date issues with entry options (it wouldn’t honor the date-time when changed.)
• Fixed the am/pm problems with entry options.
• Fixed the problem with honoring the dates of downloaded (when editing existing) posts.
• Changed the display for picking an existing entry to show the status of comments (since the “Draft” / “Publish” status isn’t readily available.)
• Added the Primary Category to the listing, it was originally hard coded to show “(Unknown).”
• Updated the spell checker to use the latest version of wxSpellChecker (as of Oct. 19, 2004.).
• Updated to using the latest version of libcurl, v. 7.12.1 (as of Oct. 2, 2004.) v. 7.12.2 (as of Oct. 19, 2004.)
• Removed the extraneous “Finished spell check” and “Spell check canceled by user” dialogs, as well as the “Save changes to personal dictionary” — notifications are now in the status bar.
• Save/edit personal dictionary now works.
• Added menu item for editing the personal dictionary
• Fixed the problem with not having the password saved but trying to download categories and text-filters.
• Added menu options Edit->(Publish Edited Entry | Entry Options | Edit an Entry) to allow for keyboard short cuts to these options (Ctrl-Enter | Alt-Enter | Alt-E).
• (This is internal, but makes for convenient coding) Got rid of the need for Boost C++ libraries (now using the wxRegEx).

Not yet:

• I’d like Zempt to remember the current status and position of the toolbars. This will be rather involved because there are several states and positions that could be assumed. This is low priority.
• Might be desirable to let the user size the Main Entry / Extended Entry / Excerpt text boxes. Or not. Also low priority.
• Still some tweaking to the File Upload tool.
• Haven’t tested it with Typepad, since I don’t do Typepad.