Zavala - An open source outliner for Macs, iPads, and iPhones

Posted by Maurice Parker
Feb 10, 2022 at 09:42 PM

I wrote a blog post about blogging using Zavala and Micro.blog. I also use Zavala to blog to GitHub pages. Any blogging platform that has an API or already has Shortcuts support could be published to from Zavala by writing a Shortcut for it.

https://zavala.vincode.io/2022/02/10/Zavala_and_Micro.blog.html

I guess the comparisons to Drummer are inevitable. Zavala and Drummer are both outliners that can be used to publish blogs. They are very different though.

All of a blog in Drummer is in one OPML file. Zavala assumes one outline equals one blog post. Drummer is more like a public daily journal with multiple entries per day. Zavala works like your typical blog where a post is like an article. The Drummer editor is available on all platforms. Zavala is only available on Apple platforms. Drummer provides a web editing experience. Zavala provides a rich text editing experience.

The list goes on and on. They are two very different applications. They will interoperate using OPML files as long as you stay away from formatting, links, and images. Drummer and Zavala have both extended OPML to handle these features, but not in compatible ways. I would have emulated how Drummer handles these things in OPML, but the way Drummer does it just wouldn’t support Zavala’s rich text editing capabilities.

I’m excited about using outliners as blogging tools and as basic word processors in general.