Linotypes were machines that first allowed a single individual to mass-produce content without sacrificing typesetting elegance and text readability. Blogs turned the web into writeable media without sacrificing the ability to remain hypertextual. This is simply an attempt to combine the two concepts together.

Linotype uses the very bleeding edge of web technologies:

• It's powered by the Apache Cocoon framework and its amazing flowscript that, thanks to the power of continuation-enabled javascript, makes writing complex XML web applications a piece of cake.
• It's based on Mozilla Midas, the inline editor available from the 1.3 release.
• The content is stored and edited as XHTML 1.0.
• All content is served as valid XHTML pages.
• XSLT 1.0 is used only on the server side to perform tree transformations (such as wrapping the DHTML editor around the original XHTML content), but it's never used for styling.
• Styling is performed entirely by CSS2.
• Javascript 1.5 in used for Midas customizations and for client-side XHTML serialization when the edited content is transmitted back to the server.
• The URL space is kept clean, designed to last and extension free. Extensions are used only when they are meant to imply a specific MIME-type.
• RSS feeds are created automatically using Cocoon's aggregation capabilities and XSLT.
• The editing capabilities are restricted to semantic XHTML: you can't change style, but only structure. Style will change accordingly, depending on the CSS2 parameters associated to the various markup elements or to their semantic class.
• Image inclusion, resizing and uploading are all done inside the editor page without a need for external upload.
• The stylesheets are designed for both text readability and elegance. The use of serif fonts is intentional because it increases text readability and gives a pleasant retro style that matches the linotype concept.
• The entire thing has been designed around the less is more paradigm.
• The code is licensed under the Apache License 2.0 which doesn't force code contribution back to the project but does protect the name, thus the project recognition and its community.

Enjoy and spread the word.

Stefano Mazzocchi.

First of all, make sure that file upload is enabled on web.xml.

Then click on the linotype here on the left.

When the login appears, use:

• user -> guest
• password -> guest

at that point, you are presented with the list of available news and a link to create a new one. Click on that, edit and enjoy.

Ah, hint, try the image inserting feature. After you have inserted the image, if you drag your mouse over it, you resize it. Isn't it cool? :-)