I don’t get all Dave Winer’s fuss about OPML.

Now he’s trying to get his OPML Editor tool officially integrated with WordPress (an addition to the ability to create new blog posts using wordPress.root, which incidentally, I can’t get to work) so that you can edit your “About” page in it.

Why would I want to edit my “About” page in an OPML Editor? I mean, seriously? I could understand possibly wanting to edit my categories and blogroll in a native OPML editor, but actual content? I don’t buy it. I know the argument is that each blog post is effectively a tree of paragraphs which contain other elements, but not only is that not the way I (or any other human I’ve met) thinks, but it also seems counter-intuitive to create and edit in that way.

At this point, someone will say “but my mother/grandmother/aunt/little sister can use this! they can’t use XXX!”, which is such rubbish from so many different angles it’s not worth debating (again).

So, quite apart from not actually understanding why on earth you’d possibly want to do something like that (which even the normally sane Robert Sayre agrees with, so I could be missing something) but dear god. The OPML Editor. Have you used that thing? Jesus christ, it’s an abomination of not only usability but design and human cognition. Some guy in Dave’s comments says that it’s open source, but I can’t see that source anywhere on the download page. At least that would give me the opportunity to make it better if I thought it was a worthwhile venture. Which I don’t, by the way.

I think the OPML Editor wins my 2005/06 award for “UI most likely to make me cry”.