November 1999 - Zope-Announce

FYI: Zope Weekly News
by Mike Pelletier 23 May '00

23 May '00

G'day, Zope Weekly News is a digest of some of the useful and interesting events which have occurred on the various Zope mailing lists and the Zope.org site. It is published each Wednesday evening. New Products and Announcements * Paul Everitt announces Sybase support in a joint press release. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013946.html http://www.digicool.com/News/Sybase * "Zen" released ZRadius, a product which allows you to authenticate web users via the Radius authentication protocol. http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/ZRadius * Anthony Pfrunder announces VisualZope 0.1a. From his web page: Basically, the "goal" of VZ is to provide a SIMPLE visual editing system for graphic designers which works cross-browser and takes advantage of the acquisition and role systems within Zope. What follows is a brief description of the components which make up the final VZ system (probably more accurate than previous posts). http://163.182.196.200/zwiki/VisualZope * Jeff Sheldon has started a weblog of his experiences with Zope. Jeff Sheldon is new to Zope, and is not a professional programmer. His weblog is a valuable resource to those also starting out with Zope. http://weblogs.userland.com/zopeNewbies/stories/storyReader$0 Updates * Zope 2.1.0 beta 2 has been released. This release includes fixes for issues found in beta 1, an updated load_site.py script and Martijn Pieters' patches to implement try/except/else and try/finally in DTML. Unless something major comes up, this will be the final beta before 2.1.0 final. http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.1.0b2/ * "4am" has submitted an update to his PythonMethod product. It allows methods, written in Python, to be created via the Zope web management interface. http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/PythonMethod * "Drew" contributed an update to his Photo product. It generates thumbnail views of images at the user's preferred size. Requires PIL. http://www.zope.org/Members/Drew/Photo * Itamar Shtull-Trauring announced ZCache v0.2. ZCache is a Python Product which allows you to cache expensive methods, taking strain off your server. It also generates 'Last-Modified' headers, aiding browser and proxy caches. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014115.html http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/ZCache Zope.org items * "Zen" submitted a tip he picked up from Michel Pelletier. He explains how volatile attributes work, and how to populate them when your object is loaded from the database. Volatile attributes are attributes which do not get written to the database, and are good for data which changes frequently. http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/tips/VolatileAttributes * "AlexR" submitted a How-To detailing the use of the DTML entity syntax. "DTML entities" are chunks of DTML which look like this: "&dtml-title_or_id;" http://www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/EntitySyntax Notable Discussions * DTML is a HUGE topic this week. Discussions spill across several lists. A very good job is done of identifying DTML's weak points. Many hold that the difficulty in using DTML comes from it's roots as a reporting language-- it isn't supposed to be used for logic. The problem is, there isn't yet an easy replacement for DTML as a programming language. Python Methods are cited as an excellent start on providing a means of moving logic out of DTML. Christopher Petrilli mentions that DC is looking at grooming Python Methods for inclusion in Zope. Others feel that reporting vs. programming is a forced distinction, and that it is awkward to have to use two different solutions. The claim that generating HTML is actually a rather complex task, and the powerful but ugly features of DTML are a necessary evil. DTML is compared to Perl! <gasp!> Otherwise, lots of very useful tips for using DTML are revealed. An excellent read for DTML beginners and wizards alike. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013710.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/1999-November/002088.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/1999-November/002102.html * Darcy Clark alerts the list of Jon Udell's latest article mentioning Zope. Jon's article discusses the ease of using Zope with Windows databases, the pain of using it with Unix databases, cheers ODBC, and jeers lack of a similar magic bullet for Unix. The thread then continues to discuss the relative merits of various free databases and using them with Zope. http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19991104S0001 http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013711.html Also, Karl Fast does an excellent job of summarising the thread, generating more sage comments. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013762.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013812.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013813.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013840.html * Francois-Regis CHALAOUX posed a question about using Zope with virtual hosting. Several useful responses were generated. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013678.html http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013688.html * Ben Galbraith submitted a comparison of Zope and Cold Fusion and solicited comments. Some of the usual suspects offer theirs. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013730.html * Otto Hammersmith started a thread about Zope and security. In it, he speaks of some of the security pitfalls that unsuspecting Zope users could experience. Brian Lloyd submits some solutions. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013779.html * Paul Everitt wrote in to remind us that there is a zope-dev(a)zope.org list for technical discussions. A brisk discussion developed to debate what constituted a technical discussion. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013796.html * Theodore Patrick launched a lengthy thread with questions about the effect of threading in Zope. A number of folks from Digital Creations provide answers. The discussion moves on with high volume and content to the topics of benchmarking and performance tuning Zope. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013808.html * Farzad Farid revives the uncacheable image thread. Because Acquisition can lead to different URLs being generated for images when viewed from different locations, it makes caching difficult and can generate excessive traffic. Others offer advice to solve this problem. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014021.html * David Harrison asks zope-dev how to return an image generated on-the-fly by an External Method. Answers found. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/1999-November/002107.html Mike Pelletier

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ANNOUCE : ZOPE-FRANCE is born
by FR Chalaoux 29 Nov '99

29 Nov '99

Hi All, I 'm happy to annonce the birth of Zope-France ( ZF ). Its objectif will be to gather together Francophones (philes) around this marvellous software. People interesting in the project should contact me. See you, FR. -- .--. |o_o | |:_/ | // \ \ Chalaoux François-Régis (| | ) mailto:chalaoux@cybercable.fr /'\_ _/`\ http://www.advl.org/ \___)=(___/

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[ANN] FSSession 0.1.0
by Pavlos Christoforou 28 Nov '99

28 Nov '99

FSSession 0.1.0 is available at: http://www.zope.org/Members/gaaros/FSSession This is a module that stores Session information on the filesystem similar to Anthony Baxter's SQLSession. Installation instructions and simple documentation are available at the above URL. Examples of usage: <dtml-call startSession> <dtml-call "FSSession.set('expensivemethod',expensivemethod())"> If expensivemethod returns a list you can then retrieve it in a future session by: <dtml-in "FSSession['expensivemethod']"> <dtml-var sequence-item> </dtml-in> Enjoy Pavlos

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Zope Weekly News
by Mike Pelletier 25 Nov '99

25 Nov '99

G'day, Zope Weekly News is a digest of some of the useful and interesting events which have occurred on the various Zope mailing lists and the Zope.org site. It is published each Wednesday evening. New Products and Announcements * "jwashin" released ZRTChat, an entirely ZClass real-time chat object. No java or javascript! http://www.zope.org/Members/jwashin/ZRTChat * The new Sybase Database Adapter has been released. It has been completely rewritten. http://www.zope.org/Products/DA/SybaseDA * "tseaver" submitted an internationalisation ZClass. It contains a set of translations of a document and serves the correct language to the user. http://www.zope.org/Members/tseaver/ZI18N * "Zen" has released GenericUserFolder, which seems to allow you to mix and match authentication methods to suit your needs. GenericUserFolder is very much beta, and not to be used on production sites. http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/GenericUserFolder Updates * "anthony" released an update of his SQL Session product. SQL Session provides SQL database-based session objects, keyed to browser cookies. Unlike the previous update, this one does not break existing SQL Session objects. http://www.zope.org/Members/anthony/software/SQLSession * "rossl" has updated the LDAPAdapter product, which allows you to authenticate web users with an LDAP server. http://www.zope.org/Members/rossl/LDAPAdapter_0.7 * Itmar Shtull-Trauring has released v0.3 of ZCache. http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/ZCache Zope.org items * "AlexR" posted a How-To about using ZCatalog's keyword index facility. A keyword index is something halfway between a text index and a field index-- it is a list of values which are treated atomically. http://www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/KeywordIndexes * Brian Lloyd has submitted a patch for Apache which allows you to use WebDAV with Zope through Apache. Normally Apache intercepts the HTTP OPTIONS request. With this patch, the request gets passed to Zope so it can offer WebDAV services. http://www.zope.org/Members/Brian/Misc/mod_cgi_webdav_patch.html * "Earthtone" wrote a mini-review of the Zope coverage in a new book, "The Quick Python Book". http://www.zope.org/Members/Earthtone/news-zope_chapter Notable Discussions * Sachin Shah wrote in to suggest that the Properties management view should include each of the property's type. Martijn Faassen agreed and suggested including the ability to change property types. Evan Simpson pulled a property-type-changer out of a hat! Oleg Broytmann suggests cut/copy/paste support. http://www.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014379.html * "Chas" asked for advice selecting an OS for his Zope server. He will be using it with an Oracle server on another machine, and so the operating system must be supported by Oracle. Suggestions so far: Linux and Sun Sparc and FreeBSD with Linux emulation. No one has verified whether FreeBSD, Chas's preference, would actually work. http://www.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014366.html * "Milt" wants to move a Zope server from a Windows machine to a Linux one. He solicited advice for accomplishing this. Solution: copy var/Data.fs from one machine to the other. It is platform-independent. http://www.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014359.html * Ross Boylan gives us a heads-up on a bug in Zope Products. It seems that a failure in Product registration (ie, in the Product's __init__.py file) can cause Zope to misreport an old error, leading to the occasional headache. http://www.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014340.html * Alexander Limi is understandably concerned about sending cleartext passwords over the Internet when authenticating Zope users and managers. Christopher Petrilli offers some solutions. http://www.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014339.html * Jason Jone kicked off a brisk discussion of FastCGI and Zope. The verdict: to get full functionality, you have to use a snapshot (prerelease) of version 2.2.3 of mod_fastcgi. Using prerelease code made some people uncomfortable. This will change when 2.2.3-final is released. http://www.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014254.html See also, doc/WEBSERVER.txt of the Zope CVS -- Mike Pelletier.

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ANNOUNCE: Zope SybaseDA v2.0.0b1 released
by Chris Petrilli 19 Nov '99

19 Nov '99

I'm proud to announce that we have finally taken the wraps off the total ground-up rewrite of the SybaseDA. This is a beta, but it's gone thru some testing already. You can find it on the Zope website at: http://www.zope.org/Products/DA/SybaseDA/ Please read the CHANGES.txt and understand all the differences, as it might break much of your code that depends on strangeness in the previous release. The CHANGES.txt is below: Zope Sybase DA Changes The DC Sybase DA provides access to Sybase Databases from Zope. Zope Sybase DA 2.00b1 Features Added The Zope Sybase DA provides the features of previous sybase database adapters and: - Fully multi-threaded - Support for Zope sub-transactions - Trailing spaces are stripped from strings on retrieval - The user interface for adding and editing database connections now uses separate fields for server, user, password, and database information. It is no longer necessary to use an arcane connection string. - Connections now have a "Transactional" option to control whether transactions are used. (Sybase consumes resources for transactions even when select statements are used, so pure-read requests should use non-transactional connections.) - Long integer fixed-decimal numbers are supported. Numeric columns with zero scale and precision greater than nine are retrieved as Python long integers. Notes on data type conversions: - Sybase Money types and numeric types for which scale is non-zero are retrieved as Python floats. This could lead to a loss of precision. - Image and text columns are truncated at 64K. Futures The following features are under consideration for the future: - Full support for Sybase text and image columns. Currently, text and image columns are truncated at 64K. - Drop-in Sybase stored procedures. - Perhaps provide dedicated data types for numeric (ie fixed decimal) and monetary data. -- | Christopher Petrilli Digital Creations | petrilli(a)digicool.com http://www.digicool.com

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Not Neccisarily Zope Weekly News, please read.
by Mike Pelletier 17 Nov '99

17 Nov '99

Hi. Not an hour ago I sent out an email titled "FYI: Zope Weekly News". The paragraph at the beginning should give a striking clue that it wasn't _THE_ Zope Weekly News, but merely a candidate for the position. If you are archiving or redistributing the Zope Weekly News, PLEASE, disregard my mailing from earlier today. The real Zope Weekly News will appear, as always, Wednesday evening. Thanks for your patience, Mike Pelletier

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Zope 2.1.0 beta 2 has been released
by Brian Lloyd 16 Nov '99

16 Nov '99

Hi all, Zope 2.1.0 beta 2 has been released. This release includes fixes for issues found in beta 1, an updated load_site.py script and Martijn Pieters' patches to implement try/except/else and try/finally constructs in DTML. Unless something major comes up, this will be the final beta before 2.1.0 final. You can download binary and source distribution of Zope 2.1.0 beta 2 from the Zope.org website: http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.1.0b2/ Brian Lloyd brian(a)digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations http://www.digicool.com

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FYI: Zope Weekly News
by Amos Latteier 10 Nov '99

10 Nov '99

Hi, Zope 2.1 beta one was released this week. There will probably be a relatively short beta period before Zope 2.1 final comes out. Zope 2.1 focuses on boosting reliability and performance. In other news, Zope community members continue to crank out code, documentation, publicity, and all manner of excitement. * Zope 2.1.0 beta 1 was released. This release includes many bug fixes, performance and reliability improvements and a number of new features such as the beginnings of internationalization support and relevance ranking for ZCatalog. http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.1.0b1/ http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-announce/1999-November/000064.html * Paul Everitt announced that there will be a Zope track at the upcoming Python conference in January. There are still two slots open if you're interesting in giving a Zope presentation. http://www.zope.org/Members/paul/ZopeTrack http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013631.html * Simon Michael announced ZWiki 0.2, a Wiki-style on-line collaborative tool. http://www.zope.org/Members/simon/ZWiki http://163.182.196.200/zwiki * Pavlos Christoforou released ZpdfDocument-0-0-1, a Zope product to create PDF output from structured text and HTML. Very cool! http://www.zope.org/Members/gaaros/ZpdfDocument http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013385.html * Edd Dumbill announced SiteSummary 1.2.1, which allows you to manage RSS channels within Zope. http://www.zope.org/Members/edmundd/SiteSummary * Zope guru Martijn Pieters posted a summary of his Zope talk at NLUUG, the Dutch UNIX Users Group. Interesting stuff. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013514.html * Evan Simpson enhanced his awesome Python Method product which allows you manage Python methods though the web. http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/PythonMethod http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013537.html * Paul Everitt posted an interesting summary of what it would take to get GNOME talking to Zope. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013580.html * Itamar Shtull-Trauring announced ZCache Product v0.1 which allows caching of Zope method calls. This looks like a very interesting start at addressing caching issues in Zope. http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/ZCache http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013603.html * Linux.com is now running a Zope banner ad created by Michael Bernstein. Linux.com hosts banner ads for a number of Linux community projects. http://www.linux.com/banner_view.phtml http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013837.html * Alexandre Ratti posted an extensive How-To on creating and using HTML selection lists in Zope. http://www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/SelectionLists * Doug Hellmann released Chameleon 0.1.0, a Zope product which allows content to be themed. http://www.zope.org/Members/hellmann/Chameleon * Jon Udell mentioned Zope again on Byte.com, this time in a column on Linux and ODBC. http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19991104S0001 See you next week. -Amos -- Amos Latteier mailto:amos@digicool.com Digital Creations http://www.digicool.com

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ANNOUNCE: Zope 2.1.0 beta 1 released
by Brian Lloyd 05 Nov '99

05 Nov '99

Hi all. Zope 2.1.0 beta 1 has been released. This release includes many bug fixes, performance and reliability improvements and a number of new features such as the beginnings of internationalization support and relevance ranking for ZCatalog. You can get 2.1.0 beta 1 from: http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.1.0b1/ I expect the beta period for this release to be pretty short - in about a week or so we expect to do either a b2 (if necessary) or a 2.1.0 final. Brian Lloyd brian(a)digicool.com Software Engineer 540.371.6909 Digital Creations http://www.digicool.com

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FYI: Zope Weekly News
by Amos Latteier 04 Nov '99

04 Nov '99

Hi, It was a normal week for Zope: many software announcements, community expansion, and many other exciting developments. Here are some hilights. It's official now, there will be a Zope book from O'Reilly. It won't be out for a while. When it is released it will probably be available under an open content license. Performance improved on the Zope.org web site thanks to new hardware and improved cache settings. Many folks who have submitted Zope bug reports will be happy to see lots of fixes appearing in CVS. These fixes mark early preparations for a Zope 2.1 release. * The performance of the www.zope.org web site was improved this week due to smarter HTTP and ZODB cache settings and better hardware. There were a few short down times but it looks like smooth sailing form here on out. Hooray! http://www.zope.org/ * Mike Pelletier announced that he and Dan York of LinuxCare will be writing a Zope book for O'Reilly. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013229.html * A perennial discussion on the Zope list is porting Zope to Java. Using Servlets with Zope would be great and JPython makes this relatively easy, right? Wrong. Philip Eby gives a good description of why we're not likely to see JZope for a long time. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013353.html * Edd Dumbill announced SiteSummary 1.1 a Zope product for managing RSS data. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013100.html * OgilvyInteractive is looking for a Chinese speaking Zope programmer. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013175.html * Stephan Richter announced ZPickle 0.0.1 a Zope Product to provide pickling services. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013266.html * Oleg Broytmann announced a Russian Zope mailing list. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-October/012885.html * Jeff Rush announced that he has updated his Zope RPMs. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-October/012967.html * Marc Gehling announced a German Zope Yahoo club. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-October/012908.html * Ethan Fremen announced a Zope and CSS How-To. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-October/013032.html * Luciano Ramalho announced that Brazil On-line has launched a Zope-based real time news service. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-October/013031.html * Petru Paler announced ClickTracker a Zope Product to track user activity. http://www.zope.org/Members/ppetru/ClickTracker * Tom Deprez posted summarized Zope Documentation Project happening in his "ZDP Weekly NEWS" post to the zdp list. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zdp/1999-October/001003.html * Amos Latteier made this slides for his talk "Extending Zope in Python" available. http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/PORPIGSlides * Mike Pelletier released ZDiscussions 0.1.0 This is a Zope Product for threaded discussions. http://www.zope.org/Members/MikeP/ZDiscussions See you next week. -Amos -- Amos Latteier mailto:amos@digicool.com Digital Creations http://www.digicool.com

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