Opal and OPML

Since I’m a long-time outliner user, I downloaded Opal, a new outliner from the folks who brought us Acta. It’s obvious that it’s in an early stage of development, but it’s also fun to use, with a nice focus on the core features, which is exactly what you want to see at this stage.

I checked the About box, as I always do when I check out a new app—since the About box is kind of like a social networking thing. (Who’s in there? Who do I know?)

And I was surprised to see my name in there as someone being thanked, and I didn’t know why—then it hit me what it had to be: my bet was that Opal imports OPML files and the OPML code is probably based on some OPML code I released a few years ago.

Sure enough! A quick class-dump confirmed it.

You have no idea how gratifying that is. (Or, maybe, if you’re a developer, you do have some idea.) I love it when other developers find my code useful and incorporate it into something cool. That totally made my day.

(I also find it cool that, even in this early stage of development, Opal already supports OPML. I was able to export my subscriptions from NetNewsWire and open the file in Opal. Nice.)