February 2000 - 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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Zope Weekly News
by Mike Pelletier 23 Feb '00

23 Feb '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. Any opinions contained in the Zope Weekly News are those of the chronicler exclusively. Announcements * Neuberger & Hughes have announced the release of version 1.0 of their WorldPilot software. It has been whispered in shady corners of conferences that WorldPilot could well be Zope's first Killer App. WorldPilot is an integrated, through-the-web PIM and IMAP mail client, with collaborative capabilities. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-announce/2000-February/000117.html New Products * Software Product: "Simple Directory of URLs", submitted by "Roug" This handy product manages sets of links to external resources. It can perform click-through counting, and allows untrusted users to submit link suggestions (which are subject to review). http://www.zope.org/Members/Roug/SimpleURLs * Software Product: "An Extensible, Base Banner System", submitted by "Bill" "Bill" wrote, "BannerSystem is the beginning of a full-fledged banner add management system. Currently, it is functional, and includes a sample implementation that can be used." http://www.zope.org/Members/Bill/Products/BannerSystem * Software Product: "JSplitter", submitted by "brianh" This is a replacement for ZCatalog's word-splitter. This product enables full-text searching of Japanese with ZCatalog. http://www.zope.org/Members/brianh/JSplitter * Software Product: "A simple site mapping object", submitted by "haqa" This ZClass product provides three forms of navigation widgets: "Top Level" (horizontal), "Full Context" (vertical) and a full Site Map. It requires "lalo"'s Renderable ZClass product. (See links) http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/ZSiteMap http://www.zope.org/Members/lalo/Renderable-ZClass * Software Product: "A simple photo album product", submitted by "haqa" A simple ZClass product which provides a means of organising and browsing collections of images. They can be browsed as thumbnails in user-configured batch sizes. http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/ZPhotoAlbum Updates * Software Product: "MySQL user folder", submitted by "vladap" Version 0.4.0 has been released. This release adds a layer of indirection to the DTML interface files the user folder uses to allow for multilingualism. Also, anonymous authentication now works. http://www.zope.org/Members/vladap/mysqlUserFolder * Software Product: "An Interface for MySQL", submitted by "adustman" This Products description states, "MySQLdb is a Python interface to MySQL-3.22. It is designed to be fully thread-safe and will not block other threads." A patch is included which will update ZMySQLDA to use this interface, rather than it's older, non-thread-safe version. The latest release is 0.1.2. http://www.zope.org/Members/adustman/MySQLdb Zope.org items * How-To: "Using Zope on a third-party web host", submitted by "gldnspud" This How-To explains how to set up Zope to run on a Unix server where you do not have administrative rights, such as on an ISP's server. http://www.zope.org/Members/gldnspud/zope3rdparty * How-To: "Use Direct Traversal of SQL Methods", submitted by Chris McDonough 'Direct Traversal' is a trick which allows you to create URLs which pass arguments to SQL Methods _without_ a query string on the end of the URL. This allows more aesthetically pleasing, "Mom-friendly" URLs. The audience for this How-To appears to be Zope newbies and intermediates with some SQL experience. http://www.zope.org/Members/mcdonc/HowTos/direct_traversal -- Mike Pelletier.

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New HowTo: Direct Traversal of SQL Methods
by Chris McDonough 21 Feb '00

21 Feb '00

I put up a new HowTo about using direct traversal of SQL methods at: http://www.zope.org/Members/mcdonc/HowTos/direct_traversal This can explain to you how to create URLs like http://mycomputer/mysqlmethod/myargone/1/myargtwo/2 instead of http://mycomputer/mydtmlmethod?myargone=1&myargtwo=2 -- Chris McDonough - Digital Creations, Inc. Publishers of Zope - http://www.zope.org

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Cataloging in Japanese!
by Brian Takashi Hooper 19 Feb '00

19 Feb '00

Hi there, I don't know how many people care about this, but...! JSplitter provides a replacement for the word Splitter that ZCatalog uses, allowing ZCatalog to do full text search of Japanese. JSplitter uses the freely available ChaSen library to do morphological analysis on Japanese text, which informs the breaking of the text into words (Japanese words are not normally delimited by spaces). In making this module I also ExtensionClass-ified the Splitter; JSplitter is implemented as a subclass of the regular Splitter... Get it here: http://www.zope.org/Members/brianh/JSplitter Feedback, comments, etc. welcomed! --Brian Hooper Digital Garage, Inc. Tokyo, Japan

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Banner System 0.1.0 Released
by Bill Anderson 19 Feb '00

19 Feb '00

This is a new Banner system. It offers similiar functionality to lalo's BannerFodler prodcut, but takes it a few steps further. The basic design follows that of Base Classes in Python, to be subclassed in ZClasses or further Python. It does include a sample implementation that can be used without modification (so far :). One big difference is that it doesn't suffer from the zero-banners-with-views-remaining bug. When no valid banners are found, it will return an html comment stating such. Another change is that you can have local banners, which can be of two forms: o Self-Contained: just like banner folder, you upload an image, and indicate the target URL. o Referential: In these, you specify the image's URL, as well as the target URL. You can also use remote banners, like the kind you get from LinkExchange, where you get some html/javascript code to put into your pages. For these, you don't worry about uploading images, or any URLs, simply put in the link code in the specified box. Banners can now be weighted. The weighting system is numerical, and based off of a default of 1. A weight of 2 is twice as likely to appear as a weight of 1. You get the idea. There may be a buglet or two, if so, let me know. I am using this right now on two of my sites with no problems so far. Future features include a tighter system, click-through tracking, and report generation. Enjoy, if you will. Comments, patches, etc. gladly accepted. Bill -- In flying I have learned that carelessness and overconfidence are usually far more dangerous than deliberately accepted risks. -- Wilbur Wright in a letter to his father, September 1900

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Press Release: WorldPilot 1.0 released
by Jens Vagelpohl 17 Feb '00

17 Feb '00

******************* WorldPilot 1.0 released Feb 17, 2000 Neuberger & Hughes releases version 1.0 of WorldPilot, a web-based Personal Information Manager. Neuberger & Hughes, known in Europe for their unified internet access devices and all-in-one "easymail" office email solutions, today released WorldPilot 1.0, a complete web-based Personal Information Manager. WorldPilot is an Open Source application built using Zope, an Open Source application server. It integrates with most IMAP mail servers to make email accessible from anywhere. Other functionality includes To Do's, Contact management, a complete calendaring solution as well as Notes. Individual users' data can be shared with other users, thereby offering a groupware component. WorldPilot will run on any platform supported by Zope, so far it has been tested on Linux, Windows and Solaris. According to Ryan Hughes, CEO of Neuberger & Hughes, the next step in WorldPilot development will be tools to synchronize data with other PIM packages like Microsoft Outlook and the PalmPilot-based applications. For more information and to download your own copy please visit the WorldPilot website at http://www.worldpilot.org. Neuberger & Hughes is the developer and manufacturer of Linux based Messaging and Groupware servers for Internet communication. Founded in 1991 Neuberger & Hughes GmbH provides users with ready to run web enabled Linux Internet appliances for easy and quick connectivity. WorldPilot is the newest product in this family. Visit www.n-h.com for more information, and download your copy of WorldPilot at www.worldpilot.org. Digital Creations is the creator of Zope and the leader in Open Source web development. Zope is an Open Source application server for building high-performance, dynamic web sites. Zope runs on nearly all UNIX platforms as well as Windows NT, and can be used with popular web servers or its own built-in web server. Visit www.digicool.com for more information, and get Zope free at www.zope.org. Contacts: Ryan Hughes, rh(a)n-h.com, Paul Everitt, paul(a)digicool.com ********** ---- Jens Vagelpohl jens(a)digicool.com Software Engineer www.digicool.com Digital Creations (888) 344-4332 Got Zope? ----

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Zope Weekly News
by Mike Pelletier 16 Feb '00

16 Feb '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. Any opinions contained in the Zope Weekly News are those of the chronicler exclusively. Announcements * Lalo Martins has begun writing a Zope tutorial in Brazilian Portuguese. His announcement stated he was halfway through, and that it was already useful. http://zope.gf.com.br/ZopeIntro New Products * Software Product: "Local Factory Objects", submitted by "lalo" This package appears to allow you to create Factory objects (objects which manage the creation of ZClass instances) in places other than a Software Product. This is useful to prevent the 'Add' list from becoming unwieldy by placing the Factories in the relevant portions of the site, rather than making them globally available. http://www.zope.org/Members/lalo/LocalFactory/LocalFactory-0.1.tar.gz * Software Product: "Persistent List and Dictionary", submitted by "AndrewWilcox" Like the PersistentMapping object, PersistentList and PersistentDict are classes that look like the basic Python types of the same names, but which are persistent and which alert the ZODB when their contents have changed. PersistentDict differs from PersistentMapping in two respects-- It is not limited to strings as keys, and it does not hide keys that begin with an underscore. http://www.zope.org/Members/AndrewWilcox/PersistentListDict * Software Product: "ZDP Tools 0.1", submitted by "roeder" This is a distribution of the very tools that make the Zope Documentation Project work. Follow the second link below to see the ZDP in action for an idea of what is possible with this toolkit. http://www.zope.org/Members/roeder http://zdp.zope.org:8080/ZDP * Software Product: "StructuredText Document", submitted by "tseaver" This is a very simple, ZClass based Product which provides a means of displaying structured text documents without creating a second DTML Method to wrap the structured text. This is often very handy. Note that ZClasses cannot be used as a Folder's index_html. http://www.zope.org/Members/tseaver/STX_Document Updates * Software Product: "load_site.py with additional features", submitted by "itmar" This is a modification of the load_site utility that comes with Zope. This utility sucks files and directories out of a local filesystem and creates corresponding Zope objects with their contents. Itmar has made some useful changes: the DTML it generates is now in the new Zope 2 syntax; certain HTML metadata and display options may be placed in object properties; javascript can be stripped out of headers (for making Dreamweaver output more lightweight); can clean up output of certain Microsoft products so that quotes display properly on other platforms. http://www.zope.org/Members/itmar/load_site * Software Product: "ZWiki 0.4", submitted by "simon" ZWiki is a product which allows the creation of wiki webs in Zope. What is a wiki web? Well, I'm not sure, but Peter Merel says that the typical wiki web is "insecure, indescriminate, user-hostile, slow, and full of difficult, nit-picking people." And these are the GOOD points! Seriously, a Wiki Web appears to be a dynamic web site which is built, torn down and rebuilt by anonymous users. 0.4 adds a number of tweaks, tunings, and new default content. See the link for details. "simon"'s news item does not include a link to the Product, so it's included below as a second link. http://www.zope.org/Members/simon/ZWiki/ZWiki_0.4_released http://www.zope.org/Members/simon/ZWiki Zope.org items * How-To: "Build a WAP site with Zope", submitted by "Duncan" This HowTo describes what you would need to do to allow Zope to serve WML pages to cell phones, PDAs, and other wireless devices via WAP. It addresses issues such as setting the content type correctly, caching, serving bitmaps, and making the standard Zope html-include files both WML and HTML-friendly. http://www.zope.org/Members/Duncan/wap_howto * "Zope Docs", submitted by "AlexR" This is a pretty handy resource. "AlexR" has compiled all the HowTo documents on Zope.org and made them available as a printer-friendly Adobe PDF file. In addition, this page has links to a pair of printer-friendly lists of all the HowTo documents on Zope.org, one sorted by name, and one by date. http://www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/ZopeDocs * How-To: "add users in python", submitted by "element" In addition to describing the process for adding users to a Zope server from a Python Product, this brief How-To also describes adding the actual User Folder ('acl_users'), adding a local role, and assigning a role to a user. http://www.zope.org/Members/element/addingUsersInPython * How-to: "Generate URLs for Objects", submitted by "jim" This is a very thorough How-To on a common, but simple (once you know the trick) problem. Astonishingly, Jim manages to stretch a one-line answer into a two-page document. I don't want to spoil the surprise ending, but it is possible to ask an object for it's canonical URL, and this How-To explains how. http://www.zope.org/Members/jim/ObjectURLs -- Mike Pelletier. mike(a)digicool.com

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new version of Local File System product
by Jonothan Farr 16 Feb '00

16 Feb '00

I've posted a new version of the Local File System product, version 0.1.5. This is still a development release. It fixes multiple problems related to permissions in the local file system (as opposed to Zope permissions). Many thanks to Greg Ward for all his help. http://www.zope.org/Members/jfarr/LocalFS -jfarr ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Hi! I'm a signature virus. Copy me into your .sig to join the fun! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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ZDP-Tools-0.1 Release
by Maik Roeder 15 Feb '00

15 Feb '00

Hi ! ZDP-Tools is a Zope product that is most useful for Documentation Projects. It is the very code that runs the new Zope Documentation Project (ZDP) site at http://zdp.zope.org:8080/ZDP * Among others, there are ZClasses for Books, Comment Folders, Draft Submission Folders, FAQs, Member Folders, News Folders, Processes, Product Documentation Folders, and ZCatalog Searches. The management interface provides different views for Managers and for Visitors. * There is basic support for Awareness through activity searches. * The ZDP-Tools are completely programmable through the web. This allows even novice DTML programmers to adapt the code to their needs. * The ZDP-Tools homepage is downloadable as an example of how to use the ZDP-Tools, and also serves as documentation. Further information and download: http://www.zope.org/Members/roeder Greetings, Maik Röder

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Enhanced load_site.py
by Itamar Shtull-Trauring 13 Feb '00

13 Feb '00

load_site.py lets you load files from the harddisk into Zope. The version included with Zope has a number of problems, however - it generates ugly DTML and loses some information when importing HTML files using the -D option. My enhanced version fixes these problems, and also lets you fix the "?" instead of "'" problem with Windows generated HTML. You can download it at http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/load_site/ I also have a version that matches the latest CVS version, but it's untested so I didn't upload it - email me if you want it. Changes to my version: 1. Generate Zope 2 style dtml - "<dtml-var standard_html_header>" instead of . 2. When using -D option: a. The contents of <head></head> is loaded to a property of the DTML Document called loadsite_header instead of loadsite-header (Death to _['stupid-var-name']!) b. the attributes of <body> (e.g bgcolor, text, onLoad) are stored in a property called loadsite_bodyattribs. 3. Added -j option which strips Javascript from <head> when using the -D option. Why should you want this? If you use Dreamweaver to create pages, you take all the Javascripts it generates, put them in one file - dw.js, add a <javascript src="/dw.js"></javascript> line to your standard_header, and then strip all the Javascripts from the header. That way you don't have 200 copies of the same (broken) Javascript in all your pages, just one. Saves bandwith, saves time when you fix bugs. 4. Added -c option to clean up "curly quotes" generated by Windows apps like Word which show up as '?' in Linux (and Macs?). Here's an example standard_html_header for use with my load_site.py (assuming you used the -D and -j option and stored all the javascripts your pages use in /common.js): <html> <head><title><dtml-var title></title> <dtml-var loadsite_header missing> <javascript src="/common.js"></javascript> </head> <body <dtml-var loadsite_bodyattribs missing>> -- Itamar S.-T., itamars(a)ibm.net

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