November 2000 - Zope-Announce

FYI: Digital Creations secures $12M round of investment
by Paul Everitt 14 Nov '00

14 Nov '00

Hello Zope friends. At long last we at Digital Creations are able to publicly say it: we've closed a $12M round of investment: http://www.digicool.com/News/CRound.html It's out on the newswire now. We'll start pushing it out more over the next 24 hours. This, needless to say, is a big deal, one that we've worked on really, really hard this year. With the tech market downturn since March, and with Open Source particularly getting a beating, it's vindicating to get good funding from strong partners. When everyone else was getting wads of cash during the go-go times, we were quietly at work, being frugal, making money, making a business case, and being profitable. We're proud to say that we got our money when money was hard to find. Let's put it this way: Open Source business is hardly dead. It's just different, and better. What will this mean? First and foremost, Zope and Digital Creations will become very competitive, very quickly, along a number of axes. As the PythonLabs move indicated, we are taking aggressive steps to become a dramatic force in the worlds of content management, web application services, and Open Source leadership. With this round, our business model has been validated. As a member of the Zope community, I view this as "the dream delivered". Many of us care deeply about this thing we're involved in, and sometimes it feels like a longshot. Though this is still a David vs. Goliath, David now has a slingshot, and a bit of steel in his eye. Thanks go to the folks here at DC, to the Zope and Python communities, and to the companies around the world that are basing their business on Zope. Onward! --Paul

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Learning Zope - A Developer's Guide to Zope
by Itamar Shtull-Trauring 09 Nov '00

09 Nov '00

I've written a guide, starting from the basics and leading up to the most complex, for aspiring Zope developers. It's organized by level and by subject, with links to lots of relevant links for each subject. If you've spent time searching zope.org for that Howto you know exists, if you're just starting and want a roadmap, or if you're looking to expand your knowledge, there's something here for you. http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/LearningZope/LearningZope.html http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/LearningZope/LearningZope.pdf -- Itamar S.T. itamar(a)zoteca.com

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November 8th Zope Weekly News
by emf 08 Nov '00

08 Nov '00

Structured Documents, Wikis for Now, Documentation process, more Write Locking, HiperDOM, Quick Management fixes, *Zope: The Definitive Guide*, count the Zopatistas, and clustering Zope.org The opinions expressed in Zope Weekly news are solely the authors', and not the opinions of Digital Creations, The Zope Community at-large, or the Spanish Inquisition. If you or your company are doing something cool with zope, "submit it to the Zope Weekly News", mailto:zope-web@zope.org for possible inclusion. And Now For Something Completely Different: --- Zope Status by Brian Lloyd Summary Getting ready for 2.2.3 Recent News Last week saw a number of new proposals in the Fishbowl at dev.zope.org. Fred Drake, a newly acquired member of the DC team added a proposal for Structured Documents that can interoperate with a wide range of tools and render themselves in a "variety of formats", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/StructuredDocument Ken Manheimer started the "Wiki for now", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/WikiForNow proposal, aimed at resolving some of the immediate shortcomings of the current Wiki product regarding its use for dev.zope.org. The idea here is to spend a short amount of time fixing the most painful problems that impede progress in the Fishbowl. Documentation is currently a weak area for Zope. Ironically, the problem really isn't a lack of content, its a lack of organization among those who produce useful documentation. The current documentation "process" is not well-defined, so Amos and Michel have started a Fishbowl project to develop and formalize the process of producing Zope documentation. The end result of this will be a well-known and "discoverable process", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/DocumentationProcess/FrontPage that will allow the community to take better advantage of the documentation energy out there: Jeffrey Shell continues to make progress on analysis on the "Write Locking project", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/WriteLocking/FrontPage to support DAV-aware Web tools that require DAV locking support on the server: HiperLogica and Martijn Pieters are working on fleshing out the HiperDom project and moving various bits of HiperDom info into the Fishbowl. Zopistas interested in this project to add XMLC-like templating to Zope should visit the new HiperDom development home and get their "licks in now", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/HiperDom/FrontPage while the requirements are being formalized. Also, Adam Davis has sent a final request for comment on his proposal for several "quick fixes", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ManagementInterfaceQuickFix that we could make to the Zope management interface to improve productivity in the 2.3 release timeframe. Near Future I had hoped to get 2.2.3 out this week, but there are still a few loose ends to tie up. I hope to (finally) get the fix for the infamous "__call__" bug included among other things. We have started some work behind the scenes to apply better organization to dev.zope.org to make it easier to find what you are looking for and to get "at a glance" status for various projects and proposals. Some of this will be bound up with the "Wiki for now" project, but there will be at least some organizational progress before that project is finished. --- Documentation by Michel Pelletier Amos and I spend much of last week *not* working on the book (yeah, we couldn't believe it either). Although we did handle the usual dozen or so comments, suggestions, and revisions sent to us by you wonderful community people about the book, most of our time was spent writing up a proposal and prototype for the Brand Spankin' New Digital Creations Documentation Process. What is that, you ask? As it stands Digital Creations has no process for authoring, editing, delivering, or maintaining, documentation. This, obviously, creates lots of problems. How many resources to we throw at documentation? How is it done? Who edits it, and when? Where can it be found? Who is it intended for? Over the past year, Amos and I have worked up a specific *instance* of a documentation process for developing a Zope book. After some consideration, and meta-thought, we have put together a proposal and prototype documentation process. For the OO-illuminati among you, you can think of this as a *class* that defines a generic process which will be used in certain instances to create documentation artifacts (for example, we used it to create the *Zope Book*). But obviously Amos and I have experience writing only one artifact, so we need your help to make this process a real thing that will really help. So "check it out", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/DocumentationProcess/FrontPage over at "dev.zope.org", http://dev.zope.org/ and tell us what you think. Many thanks, and on that note, what ZWN would be complete without me plugging "the Zope Book":http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB/ at least once? But I do have some real news, it looks like O'Reilly has decided that the book title will be *Zope: The Definitive Guide*, which is a bit of a misnomer because it *isn't* definitive, it's didactic. But the marketroids hath spoke, and so it shall be. Till next week. --- Zope Web -- by Ethan Fremen How Many Zopatistas? Zope gets downloaded from zope.org 12-15,000 times a month. It has risen steadily over the last year and a half. Zope has been downloaded roughly 200,000 times since version 2.0. Zope is distributed on all major linux distributions, but there's no way of tracking those. Netcraft asserts that there are 937 servers "reporting themselves as zope", http://www.netcraft.com/survey/Reports/0010/byserver/Zope/index.html Note that this only works for proxy-passed or naked zopes, not pc/fast-cgi'd sites. For example, CodeIt shows up as Apache. Another reason to encourage the practice of proxy-passing :) I think it may be safe to assume that at most, 1/2 of live zope sites use proxy passing. There are 1617 members of zope(a)zope.org and 409 members of zope-dev. There are 200,000 unique visits to zope.org every month (ok, that's a record :). Therefore, I believe there are at least 2000 zope sites and 10,000 - 20,000 people who have used zope at least once, though they may not admit it if they're running for election. Zope Heads East for Winter Zope is finally going to be moving to a three-system cluster! When you've got a completely dynamic website with over 10,000 pages of content, 256mb ram just doesn't cut it any more. We've got a nice system up with the folks at baymountain.com, which includes one Storage Server and two ZEO Client servers, in the addition to a load balancer. This way, no spider should get in our way, and as our usage grows, we'll just be able to add more commodity boxen as ZEO clients to handle the load! You can go visit our tenuous "migration plan", http://www.zope.org/Wikis/zope-web/MigrationPlan as long as you promise to remember that the best laid plans of mice and men oft gang agley. Vote! Here's something for all you international folks who're sick and tired of United States elections, and something more important for those of you who've made the choice between Gush or Bore: Renaming Python Methods. Python Methods have a poor name, because you can have a python method that lives on the filesystem. Furthermore, we're going to have Perl methods soon, and maybe tcl methods and java methods and Assembly methods... ok, probably not assembly methods. Anyway, take the poll, and help decide what- if anything- methodish objects in zope should be called. Documentation Overview Rik Hoekstra has submitted a rough draft of the Documentation Overview: Take a "look at it", http://www.zope.org/Documentation/ORganization/Use and "send in your comments", zope-web(a)zope.org -EOT-

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Vote on the new name for Python Methods!
by Shane Hathaway 07 Nov '00

07 Nov '00

Being Election Day in the United States, now is a good time to vote on the new name for Python Methods. Python Methods are a relatively new concept for Zope. They give you the features of DTML, such as through-the-web editing and security, while providing a familiar, refined syntax. But before we can fold them into the Zope core, you need to help us choose the right name for them. Some have voiced the opinion that the name "Python Method" is confusing because it can just as easily refer to methods in standard Python modules. There are some interesting alternatives, so please cast your vote! http://www.zope.org/Members/hathawsh/poll

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RFC: Zope.asn.au : Australian Zope User Group Association
by Nicholas Roberts 06 Nov '00

06 Nov '00

pls send this version to the Announce list, thanks ---- RFC: Zope.asn.au : Australian Zope User Group Association hi Australian Zopistas, I am interested in forming an Australian Zope User Group Association. i.e. Zope.asn.au. Could those individual and organisational users of Zope let me know if they are keen. I really think its a good idea to push this now, I know of a few players (1 in Qld, 2 in Vic), but compared to the mainstream Zope is miniscule. Some things I would like to see Zope.asn.au do would be 1. Link-up with the Python crowd, in the Universities and Industry. Some Python outfits are doing industrial strength business (ie CommSecure) 2. Encourage schools & uni's to teach, talk about Zope (many Academics are already Python users) 3. Advocate Zope in the IT Marketplace 4. Organise an Australian Zope conference, maybe the culmination of a 6-12 month campaign 5. Get Zope into the Australian IT media 6. Create a Job Board or some kind of Australian Zope vortal 7. Set-up a Zope.asn.au mailing list 8. Work-out a way to get more resources into Zope in Australia 9. Showcase some Australian Zope (initially Python ?) Zope success stories please email your initial response to mailto:Zope@synarchy.net -- Nicholas Roberts, Webmaster/Director mailto:Nicholas.Roberts@SYNARCHY.NET -- Websystems Information Australia ABN: 95 052 408 849 http://websystems.com.au

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RFC: Zope.asn.au : Australian Zope User Group Association
by Nicholas Roberts 06 Nov '00

06 Nov '00

RFC: Zope.asn.au : Australian Zope User Group Association hi Australian Zopistas, I am interested in forming an Australian Zope User Group Association. i.e. Zope.asn.au. Could those individual and organisational users of Zope let me know if they are keen. I really think its a good idea to push this now, I know of a few players (1 in Qld, 2 in Vic), but compared to the mainstream Zope is miniscule. Some things I would like to see Zope.asn.au do would be 1. Link-up with the Python crowd, in the Universities and Industry. Some Python outfits are doing industrial strength business (ie CommSecure) 2. Encourage schools & uni's to teach, talk about Zope 3. Advocate Zope in the IT Market place 4. Organise an Australian Zope conference, maybe the culmination of a 6-12 month campaign 5. Get Zope into the Australian IT media 6. Create a Job Board or some kind of Australian Zope vortal 7. Set-up a Zope.asn.au mailing list 8. Work-out a way to get more resources into Zope in Australia 9. Showcase some Australian Zope (initially Python ?) Zope success stories please email this list or send your initial response to mailto:Zope@synarchy.net -- Nicholas Roberts, Webmaster/Director mailto:Nicholas.Roberts@SYNARCHY.NET -- Websystems Information Australia ABN: 95 052 408 849 http://websystems.com.au

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ZWiki 0.7.1 released
by Simon Michael 03 Nov '00

03 Nov '00

ZWiki 0.7.1 is a (recommended) bugfix release. * fixed broken line-ending handling and non-rendering of initial lines containing ":" in dtml modes * return to the wiki page after clicking the reparent button * added warning of incompatibility with old dtml methods to readme Download: http://zope.org/Members/simon/ZWiki Thanks!

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Zope Weekly News for November 1st, 2000
by ethan mindlace fremen 02 Nov '00

02 Nov '00

Something about those python guys, put your writes in a "Lock Box", Brazil and Netherlands in XML tryst, Petrilli digs to the Dublin Core, Davis wants a quick fix, and is there a Doc in the house? The opinions expressed in Zope Weekly news are solely the authors', and not the opinions of Digital Creations, The Zope Community at-large, or the Spanish Inquisition. If you or your company are doing something cool with zope, "submit it to the Zope Weekly News", mailto:zope-web@zope.org for possible inclusion. And Now For Something Completely Different: --- Zope Status by Brian Lloyd Summary Big News in Zopeland Recent News As most of you probably already know, Digital Creations is proud to welcome the Python Labs group to our team! You can "read Guido's announcement", http://deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=686714305 Last week saw more progress on Jeffrey Shell's "Write Locking" project to support DAV-aware Web tools that require DAV locking support on the server. HiperLogica and Martijn Pieters are moving the HiperDom project forward. Zopistas interested in this project to add XMLC-like templating to Zope should visit the new HiperDom development home now, while the requirements are being formalized, and "get their licks in", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/HiperDom/FrontPage Chris Petrilli has added a proposal to add standard metadata to Zope objects. "Read the proposal", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/StandardMetadata Adam Davis has added a proposal for several "quick fixes" that we could make to the Zope management interface in the 2.3 release timeframe to "improve productivity", http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ManagementInterfaceQuickFix Near Future Expect a 2.2.3 release in the next week the contains fixes for all Hotfix bugs to date and a number of collector fixes. Work will also be proceeding on several of the items on the Zope 2.3 plan (which is available on dev.zope.org) We will also be working on applying some better organization to dev.zope.org to make it easier to find what you are looking for and to get "at a glance" status for various projects and proposals. --- Zope Web -- by Ethan Fremen Mission Quite Improbable I am still engaged in a stealth mission. Documentation Overview The layout for the Documentation Overviews is done. We're going to be delivering the completed versions by the end of next week. -EOT-

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Updated Compilation of Zope Howtos and Tips
by Alexandre Ratti 01 Nov '00

01 Nov '00

Hello, I updated the compilations of Zope Howtos and Tips in PDF format. The new PDF files contain 234 Howtos and 79 Tips. You can download them from here: <http://www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/ZopeDocs/> Secondary download site (where uncompressed PDFs are also available): <http://alexandre.ratti.free.fr/ZopeDocs/> Cheers. Alexandre

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ZWiki 0.7.0 released
by Simon Michael 01 Nov '00

01 Nov '00

ZWiki 0.7.0 ("Halloween!") is out.. It's dark.. and the witching hour is near. Don't be afraid.. :) Download: http://zope.org/Members/simon/ZWiki Changes: http://zwiki.org/ChangeLog * cookie-based user options, including edit form size, timezone, bookmarks and wikiwikiweb-style username (help from Phil Armstrong) * ZWiki is now zope 2.2-compatible (Garth Kidd) and -requiring, and benefits from the 2.2 security model. Executable dtml pages now run with those permissions that are common to both the page-viewing user and the wiki web's owner. Set the folder's owner to limit the permissions of executable pages. * incorporated & updated Chris Withers' product for creating wiki webs * added streamlined "hierarchal2" wiki style & other layout tweaks * wikiwikiweb-style late page creation * added simple javascript-disabling code * made paths work with virtual hosting again (Evan Simpson) * fixed unreliable ! line protection in structuredtext modes * fixed unreliable remote wiki links in classicwiki mode * more permissive remote wiki link regexps (Geoff Gardiner) * "with this" dtml kludge no longer needed * added built-in defaults for all dtml methods * simpler, more consistent urls & api * code refactoring/cleanups, other misc. bugfixes Thanks!

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