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The Zope Weekly News
by ethan mindlace fremen 02 Jun '00

02 Jun '00

This week's ZWN covers the upcoming Open Source Convention, the forthcoming Zope 2.2, the PTK's further integration with the community and Zope.org's new community features and recent events. The opinions expressed in Zope Weekly news are solely the author's, and not the opinions of Digital Creations, The Zope Community at-large, or the Spanish Inquisition. The Zope Weekly News now has a "permanent home", http://www.zope.org/Documentation/ZWN. And Now For Something Completely Different: Open Source Convention Zope is going to have a strong showing at the "Open Source Convention", http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon2000/, July 17-20, 2000 This conference should be pretty amazing. Guido von Rossum is giving a State of Python speech, Gregory Bendord is giving a futuristic keynote on the "Comfy Culture", and the Zope community will be there as well: o Ryan Huges will be "talking about worldpilot", http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e_sess/725 o Paul Everitt will be talking about "the Zope-Mozilla Initiative", http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e_sess/853 o Christopher Petrilli will be giving a tutorial on "Zope for developers", http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/w/python_tutorials.html based on the materials "taught at IPC8", http://www.zope.org/Members/petrilli/Presentations/ o In the "It's like Zope just not" department, Elaine Ashton is holding a Birds of a Feather to talk about how Zope's success isn't due to the inherent goodness of Python, and that "Perlers can do it too", http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon2000/bofs/ Documentation Status -- by Amos Latteier I'd like to share some what Michel Pelletier and I have been doing to improve Zope documentation. * We conducted a poll to help us determine what was most needed. We found out that Zope docs are of middling quality and folks most want new user help. * We wrote an online help system for Zope and wrote help content for all management screens. Right now we are updating this content for Zope 2.2. The help system will ship with Zope 2.2 and an alpha is available right now. * We've started a Zope API documentation process. Right now there is an extensive Zope API documentation wiki on Zope.org. The fruits of this labor will be API docs that will ship with Zope in the online help system. Right now several API docs are complete and are included in the current 2.2 alpha. * We've overhauled Zope training materials and will make them available publicly in the next week or so. * We're still working on Zope Guides and References replacements. I think that the training materials will be quite useful for this effort. I hope to have Guide and Reference replacements done by the end of the summer. Zope Status -- by Brian Lloyd Summary o Lots of collector issues were completed for inclusion in 2.2 beta. o All of the hard thinking for the remaining todo list for beta 1 is basically done. Now its a race to the finish line :^) Last week highlights 20 collector issues were fixed last week in preparation for 2.2 beta, mostly issues that pre-date the 2.2 alpha release. Kudos to this week's MVPs who submitted patches and helped to diagnose bugs and test fixes: o Toby Dickenson contributed a patch to speed up Zope startup. o Itamar Shtull-Trauring and Chris Withers tracked down a problem with image caching that affected certain versions of Netscape browsers. o Phillip Eby helped uncover a problem with double aborting of objects registered with the transaction machinery. o Itamar also sent a patch for Netscape misfeature that recognizes Windows extended ISO Latin-1 characters as HTML delimiters which would have slipped by HTML quoting. o Anthony Baxter and Kevin Dangoor helped track down a problem with importing in the 2.2 alpha release. o Shane Hathaway did some much-needed work on the DateTime module. Many folks also participated in a discussion of a proposed Observer interface to support event-based designs (like email notification) in Zope. There is now a proposed set of Observer interfaces on the "interfaces Wiki", http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/Projects/Interfaces on Zope.org (and there was much rejoicing). Next week Finish up outstanding issues and get a 2.2.0 beta 1 release out. The outstanding issues to finish before the beta are: o Changing how ownership is handled for move / rename operations. Ownership info will not change for move or rename operations, and a new knob will likely be added to the "import" screen so you can choose to import objects with their existing ownership information intact. The online help for ownership will be updated accordingly. o Some basic hooks to support virtual hosting (a la SiteAccess) have been designed and will be added to allow product authors to write virtual hosting support without fragile dependencies on parts of the Zope core. o Finish changes to the undo machinery that will expose a more appropriate subset of undo-able transactions to the user. The set exposed now was fine at one time, but as the line between "site management" and "site user" continues to blur, a more restricted subset will make undo easier to delegate to a broader range of users. o Get the minimal Observable default implemention checked in to the Zope core. Note that for 2.2 at least, the only impact of this will be that ZClasses will be able to subclass the default Observable implementation. While we suspect that many builtin Zope objects could benefit from being Observable in the longer run, we want to let the interface and default implementation shake out in application usage before taking that step. o Some misc. catalog bugs need to be closed. This week in the PTK Community -- by Tres Seaver * There's one new bug, one closed bug, and 16 outstanding bugs in the "Portal Toolkit Tracker", http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/Tracker. There are also 14 current feature requests. * "Front door revamped", http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/ to give better access to PTK resources. * As an initial step toward DigitalCreations' goal of opening up Zope development to the community, we have invited the following members of the PTK community to jump through the hoops needed to establish them as CVS and Tracker contributors: - Chris Withers - Steve Alexander - Bill Anderson - Chip Vanek - Kevin Dangoor - Dan Pierson * Steve Alexander "performed the first community checkin", http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/2000-May/000885.html to the PTK CVS repository: *...and the crowd goes wild!* * Steve also "fixed the recent breakage", http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/2000-May/000896.html introduced by tightening security on ZCatalog * Dan Pierson has code ready to check in to integrate the PTK with the new LoginManager; he is "awaiting comment", http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/2000-May/000871.html by the community Looking Ahead * Tres Seaver is drafting a vision document for the "next-generation", http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/ZWiki/OnceAndFuturePTK of the PTK: * Chip Vanek has done some work on a new "skin" for the PTK. Watch for him to "post it", http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/ZWiki/ContributedPTKProducts * Landing Dan's LoginManager patch. <hr NOSHADE SIZE="0" WIDTH=95%> This week in the Zope Web -- by Ethan Fremen * The Zope Web fell off the map over Memorial Day weekend, as all the magic smoke got out of the Network Interface Card in the primary nameserver. The problem was rectified, but the mailing lists suffered indegestion for some time afterwards. * There was an IRC chat with Jim and Paul about Perl Methods. Can Camels have Zen? Check "the summary", http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Chats/ChatTopics/ to find this and other exciting answers. * There is a "Tracker for zope.org", http://www.zope.org/Tracker! Please submit your bugs and feature requests here. Don't forget to check to see if someone has already submitted your request. * There is a "mailing list for zope.org", http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-web. Join if you want to be involved in making zope.org ever more elucidating. Bugs/features addressed 24 open bugs and feature requests lie within the tracker currently: 4 bugs have been resolved and 2 accepted. * "Mountable Filesystem has been added", http://www.zope.org/Tracker/2 so that Wikis stay unpacked to track their history. * Loging in and out now takes you "back where you came from", http://www.zope.org/Tracker/6 * Clicking on Spotlight "takes you to the old spotlights", http://www.zope.org/Tracker/7 * All zope-related mailing lists "are now listed", http://www.zope.org/Resources/MailingLists. Thanks to rungaya for submitting "this request", http://www.zope.org/Tracker/25 * Products can now be sorted according to Author, Date and Title: The request of many, including Evan Gibson, rungaya, and mindlace :) More "product sorting features", http://www.zope.org/Tracker/18 have been requested. Zope Mail There was a net gain of 78 subscriptions to all the mailing lists @zope.org in the week ending May 21. * zope lost 48 subscribers, but still managed to eke out 8 more than we started the week with. * zope-announce managed to net 13 new subscribers, hopefully encouraging some people to actually post announcements there :) * zope-dev proved academically challenging, losing a net two subscribers in the last week, bringing the brain drain over the last two weeks to 5. * zope-ptk netted four subscribers. I expect this newsgroup to be one to follow in the coming months. * zope-mozilla held more or less even, with one net subscriber. * zdp picked up a net five members, continuing growth that has been maintained since a mid-December lull. * zope-packagers stayed even, zope-checkins lost one, and digicool-cvs stayed even, more evidence that Zope needs to help people to use The Source. Next Week: * Making the Members page do something is an issue that's been floating around for at "least two months", http://zope.nipltd.com/public/lists/zope-archive.nsf/ByKey/C7FB63A7488F21D7. Work will be put in, and progress will be made. Follow the fireworks in "the tracker", http://www.zope.org/Tracker/16 and see Digital Creation's jam session on the broader topic of "ReallyBigFolders", http://www.zope.org/Wikis/zope-dev/ReallyBigFolders * Alexandre's "printer-friendly list", http://zope.nipltd.com/public/lists/zope-archive.nsf/ByKey/2DA8694265457909 should find it's way onto the how-to page. Future Plans: * Chris Withers jumped on the idea that we could use zope.net and zope.com, and fired up a "wiki about it", http://www.zope.org/Members/chrisw/ZopeSites/FrontPage * Members of the community actively interested in zope.org need to be part of making it, in similar fashion to the way people are getting access to the PTK & zope CVS.

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Duplicate messages on zope lists
by Ken Manheimer 29 May '00

29 May '00

Though zope.org's network hookup is once again allowing the mail to get through, we're seeing multiple copies of many maillist messages. We hope to track down the cause of this problem soon - in the meanwhile, we apologize for the disruption! If you want to reduce the impact of the duplicates in the meanwhile, you could try setting your list subscriptions to 'digest' mode. (You may want to leave your zope-announce subscription as is, since it's relatively low traffic, and we're going to use it to announce the resolution of the problem.) To set to digest mod, for example, for the zope list, visit: http://www.zope.org/mailman/options/zope/your@subscription.address and set the digest option. (If you don't know your subscription address, visit the respective roster page, eg http://www.zope.org/mailman/roster/zope If you don't know your password, click the "send password" button on your options page to have it delivered to you.) You may still get duplicates of the digests, but at least they'll come less frequently... Ken Manheimer klm(a)digicool.com

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ZPoPyDA Database adapter for Postgresql
by thierry＠mixadlive.com 29 May '00

29 May '00

Hi, Mixadlive has just released ZPoPyDA v.0.1. ZPoPyDA is a *stable* Postgresql Database Adapter for Zope based on our driver PoPy. It aims to replace the current ZPygresql DA. This database adapter is released under the GPL Licence. You can get the tarball at http://www.mixadlive.com/software Enjoy. -- Thierry MICHEL Mixadlive Developer

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PROPOSAL: Online chat with Jim and Paul
by Paul Everitt 27 May '00

27 May '00

Howdy folks. It's clear that we were unclear in communicating the Perl For Zope announcement. What this needs is a little...clarity! I propose an IRC chat on Wednesday with Jim Fulton and me. The topic will be "What Are Methods and How Does Perl Fit In?" I'll announce time and location later, when someone coaches me on just how you do these damn things on IRC. :^) Why are we doing this? First, I think it's crucial that we at Digital Creations work harder to engage the community in the thinking of Zope. (In fact, this is the number one goal of Brian Lloyd, Zope Product Manager). And the great debate over the announcement makes this a perfect time. Second, I'm hoping that this can become a regular event. The Mozilla crowd has done this, with good success I believe. I'm trying to follow their pattern (one hour, logs posted afterwards). Thoughts? --Paul Paul Everitt Digital Creations paul(a)digicool.com 540.371.6909 ----------------------------------------- The Open Source Zope application server http://www.zope.org/ -----------------------------------------

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ZPoPyDA v.0.1 (Zope Postgresql Database Adapter based on PoPy drive r) r)
by thierry＠mixadlive.com 27 May '00

27 May '00

Hi, Mixadlive has just released ZPoPyDA v.0.1. ZPoPyDA is a *stable* Postgresql Database Adapter for Zope based on our driver PoPy. It aims to replace the current ZPygresql DA. This database adapter is released under the GPL Licence. You can get the tarball at http://www.mixadlive.com/software Enjoy. -- Thierry MICHEL Mixadlive Developer

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LoginManager 0.8.6
by Ty Sarna 26 May '00

26 May '00

A new release of LoginManager is now available on zope.org. The main changes in this release are support for having user folders at multiple levels in the tree, and preliminary Zope 2.2 compatability (though the Generic User Source hasn't been updated for 2.2 yet and likely won't work). See the Changes file for more details. URL: http://www.zope.org/Members/tsarna/LoginManager/LoginManager-0_8_6.tgz/view

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ANN: Perl For Zope
by Paul Everitt 24 May '00

24 May '00

Howdy gang. Below is an announcement that we'll start distributing over the next 24 hours. I wanted to let you folks see it first. In summary: Perl Methods. This isn't a press release, which we'll be doing in the run-up to the O'Reilly Open Source conference in July, when the code is closer to being available. ----------- Digital Creations, creators of the Open Source Zope application server, announced today that it is teaming with ActiveState, a leading provider of Internet programming software, to make Perl a scripting language for Zope. Perl is the predominant scripting language for Internet applications and is a key success story for the Open Source software movement. Zope is written in Python, the fastest growing Open Source scripting language. "It is clear that the strength of Zope realizes the future architecture of the Web," says Paul Everitt, CEO of Digital Creations. "This dynamic architecture, and the people working with it, are a fantastic match for scripting languages. Thus it is natural that Digital Creations would team with ActiveState to make Perl a scripting language for Zope." "Zope is a powerful content management system that we use internally," said Dick Hardt, CEO of ActiveState. "By adding the power of Perl to Zope, we will be able to leverage all the existing Perl technology that we have as well as bring the worlds of Python and Perl closer together." Under this agreement, ActiveState will get Python and Perl to run in the same application. More specifically, Perl programmers can code critical pieces of business logic in Zope solutions. "The Perl for Zope project brings the worlds of the two most important open source programming languages together," stated Gisle Aas, Senior Developer, ActiveState. "Python programmers will be able to directly take advantage of the large collection of reusable Perl program modules, like DBI, found on CPAN. Perl programmers will be able to program and customize the Zope web application server using their favorite language." The initial developer release of Perl For Zope will coincide with the O'Reilly Open Source Software Convention in July 2000. For more information on the project, please visit the Perl For Zope project page at http://www.zope.org/Wikis/zope-perl/. Contact Information For Digital Creations, contact Paul Everitt, paul(a)digicool.com, 540.371.6909x102. For ActiveState, contact Lori Pike, lorip(a)activestate.com, 604.713.8433. --Paul Paul Everitt Digital Creations paul(a)digicool.com 540.371.6909 ----------------------------------------- The Open Source Zope application server http://www.zope.org/ -----------------------------------------

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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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Mailinglist for MetaPublisher
by Mark Pratt 22 May '00

22 May '00

hello, we have set up a mailinglist for MetaPublisher users. you can register via this link http://mailman.beehive.de/mailman/listinfo/metapublisher or send an email to: metapublisher-request(a)mailman.beehive.de regards, mark -------------------------------------------------------------- mark pratt (managing director) mark(a)beehive.de beehive elektronische medien GmbH http://www.beehive.de phone: +49 30 847-82 0 fax: +49 30 847-82 299

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MetaPublisher released w/ 15p User Guide
by Mark Pratt 18 May '00

18 May '00

hello all, MetaPublisher was designed as a helpful tool you can use to create complex forms. MetaPublisher permits you to manage large amounts of data without having to know how to program. Unique features include the ability to easily extend what type of data can be manipulated through "field types" as well as the storing of presets. Several field types and basic presets are included in the package. The roughly 15 page User Guide in PDF format includes all the information you need to get started. You can get MetaPublisher and the User Guide via the beehive website: http://www.beehive.de regards, mark -------------------------------------------------------------- mark pratt (managing director) mark(a)beehive.de beehive elektronische medien GmbH http://www.beehive.de phone: +49 30 847-82 0 fax: +49 30 847-82 299

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