You might be familiar with Google Docs' (and presumably also the other 'office' apps) ability to communicate with a blog server to publish a post directly from its interface. (It's located in Share > Publish as a web page).
I'm interested in knowing the standard for the data transmission that this system uses. Of course, I can always reverse-engineer the code for one of the blog applications supported, but a formal specification would be more useful.
Thanks in advance!
It seems to support three types of API :
Those (at the the two last ones) seem to be based upon some kind of XML-RPC protocol (see also) ; so, the ability to use them has to be linked to what API (classes/methods) they export -- for blogging-software, those will be methods to get/create posts, most probably ; and only a few methods, I guess, so that using those API is not too complicated...
The first one seems to use some kind of ATOM-based format (see, for instance, what has to be used to create a new post)
Still, using that kind of "half-standard" API means you'll have to code some stuff each time you want your application to support a new API ; happily, there are not that many blogging-software related APIs : many blogging software tend to use the same ones, which is great : it allows you (or google docs, btw ;-) ) to publish to many different kind of software with only implementing the 2 or 3 most important / most used APIs.
For instance, the well-know platform Wordpress supports both Metaweb, Blogger, and MovableType APIs -- even if those were created for other software, at first -- coincidence (or not ^^ ) those are the same as Google Docs supports : the most used, I suppose ;-)
Actually, the Blogger API that Google Docs uses is the original (depricated) XML-RPC one, not the new GData API. The original Blogger protocol is the oldest and the simplest of the three supported (good for a quick implementation).