January 2001 - Zope-Dev

ZDESIGN IDEAS = How to improve 'manage' ?
by Jason Cunliffe 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

Hello I am cross poisting this becaese I beleie it merits responee fom both lists.. The need to improve the manage interface has grown urgently clear to me while using Zope myself, designing for all sorts of community and collaborative Zope-based projects, demos for a number of innocent bystanders, interested parties and potential clients. Zope 'manage' is plain primitive at present. Considering the power of Zope, and the real workflow needs of people working with it, imho this present lack of thoughtful user interface makes no sense. By ignoring these basics, Zope is neglecting a #1 self-promotion opportunity - how it runs out of the box, and how quickly one can use it as site-planning/design tool.It is quite unproductive now compared to what it could/should be. I am looking for real help here on how best to improve this... Here is a list of features I believe should be default manage screen behavior now. Please submit your comments and improvements to these improvements: KISS For those who do not want any added features, there should be an option in z2.py or as a manage_config DTML method in "/" or anywhere else in the tree to enable or disable 'advanced manage' features. ----------------------------------------------------------- 1. SORT TABLE 'manage' needs to presented with basic column listings so one can display sort by headings. I am not sure if this turns into a CatalogAware Inferno or whether all this info is already hidden in the ZODB and could be extracted adn cached sensibly and quickly. What do you think? For example some headings I see a real need for: NAME [default now], DATE[created, last modified] SIZE, TYPE[meta-type], USER[default=owner], DEPTH, COUNT, CHANGES, PROPERTY, DISPLAY NAME should be like now, but one needs to be able to group things more sensibly, so that upper and lower-case can be ignored. For example: MYFOLDER, myFolder_config, MyFOLDER_Display could all be grouped together where the probably belong. DATE Fact of the matter is that, during development and very often during normal life, we need to work on things according to the most recent ordering. This is also an invaluable way for people on a development team to see what has been 'happening'. Since Zope is a tool for 'customers who have customers who have customers...' it means that even after the original site DTML/Python developers may have gone home, a Zopesite is under development as long as it is being used and growing. All of those users, especially deserve better means to see and understand how the site is working and to allow them to work better together. SIZE How big is this thing? When I look at a graphic is it a thumbnail icon or a hires scan? What about PDF What about folders - how to calculate the size of folder? TYPE Display objects sorted by TYPE. USER Default sorts by Owner, but could also be designed to sort by last user who accessed the object. DEPTH How many levels below this thing? This would only work for Zope folders. An essential indicator of hidden complexity/importance etc. COUNT How many things are contained here? Targeted mainly for Zope Folders to allow one get a good quick overview of site structure without needing to click though a lot of trees of nested manage screens. CONT could be nicely integrated with DEPTH feature above to make for a more compact interface. If the object is not Folder-like, then COUNT could perhaps be used to display references or some such. In other words, how many times is this object referred to explicitly? I realize that dynamic Zopesite references * acquisition could make this a painful/impossible question. But counting static references could be very useful. How should COUNT work with say 'standard_html_header? hmmm not sure.. My idea is that at a minimum it could estimate how many references existed below this part of the ZODB tree. CHANGES The idea here is to give a useful indication of objects which have changed. But when and how? I really don;t have an answer to this... - perhaps a limited search using UNDO mechanism - perhaps a simple user ID and date which showed the last person to change it. PROPERTY This one should be easy.. sort adn display all objects in 'manage' based on common property names and values. For example, have a property called 'status' - values might be 'OK', 'buggy', 'draft', 'approved' etc. Too many properties and to many values would detract from usefulness probably, some some pragmatic workflow-oriented values could be very valuable for ordering and developing Zope projects. DISPLAY The idea her is to offer a simple visual toggle HIDE/SHOW like Photoshop, Fireworks, Illustrator and myriad other graphics apps do. Suppose you have a big list of objects in a folder which you do not want to look at al the time. They take up too much screen space, can be confusing and may not be relevant for certain users and roles. Simple selection would be a checkbox, but advanced DISPLAY could be based on the other criteria listed here. For example only show me the objects modified since last week by USER 'really nice client' :-) How easy hard is the above to do? Has it already bee done? What techniques/components exists already to make it happen? What need to be developed? How does this affect Zope core? What woudl you like to see when you click on manage? What would you lceints liek to see? - Jason ___________________________________________________________ Jason CUNLIFFE = NOMADICS['Interactive Art and Technology']

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Re: [Zope-dev] Acquisition wishlist :-)
by Dieter Maurer 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

Chris Withers writes: > And I suppose the other part of my wishlist: > > class MyClass(Acquisition.Implicit): > # your_attribute will be acquied > > # index_html won't > index_html = None No, that is not enough! As a side effect to turn off acquisition, you defined the attribute. This will not play well with inheritance: You will not only prevent acquisition of "index_html" but also prevent inheritance of it (which may be really necessary in some contexts). Dieter

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RE: [Zope] ZCatalog and 'fuzzy logic'
by sean.upton＠uniontrib.com 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

My understanding is that part of the problem is that sorting a dataset based upon regular expression (doesn't matter what algorithm you use) creates a rather large tree of possibilities that is largely impractical to sort, at least not without a lot of overhead. My compromise for the searches that I'm planning on using is to allow regex searches of "search results" from the catalog. This requires a bit more patience, as it is an unindexed search... Sean -----Original Message----- From: Morten W. Petersen [mailto:morten@esol.no] Sent: Tuesday, January 09, 2001 7:46 AM To: zope-dev(a)zope.org; zope(a)zope.org Subject: [Zope] ZCatalog and 'fuzzy logic' Is there anyone who could try to give an estimate of how long it would take to add fuzzy logic (regexp-like) searching capability to the ZCatalog? And reasoning as to why would be appreciated. ;) -Morten _______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope(a)zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )

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ZCatalog and 'fuzzy logic'
by Morten W. Petersen 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

Is there anyone who could try to give an estimate of how long it would take to add fuzzy logic (regexp-like) searching capability to the ZCatalog? And reasoning as to why would be appreciated. ;) -Morten

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When to use Rack , Folders w/Customize, etc.
by Johan Carlsson 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

Hi, Reading up on ZPatterns I'm still confused about some thing's (sometimes more, sometimes less). I wonder: When to use Rack, Folders w/Customize, attribute provider, sheetproviders etc. In which solution do I get ZODB dependens. One important aspect for some of my applications are to be as "virtual" as possible. (I hope this question is clear enough :-) Regards, Johan Carlsson

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ZPatterns and ZClass Views
by Roch'e Compaan 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

I was wondering to what extent people using ZPatterns find the Views one can set up for a ZClass tolerant of the Role-centric approach followed by ZPatterns. For example: I have two Specialists, DocumentedProducts and Products. The Products specialist manages ZClasses of type 'Product'. Products are remapped to DocumentedProducts (where product plays the role of documented product). Typically in Zope, ZClass Views has bearing on a single Zope Object and Views are filtered according to User Roles, thus the focus is security. ZPatterns makes it possible to extend the roles an object has. Ideally the Views in a ZPatterns Application framework would be security AND role (the role the object plays) focused ie. when I look at a Product instance where it plays the role of documented product, I might have the views FAQs, HOWTOs, etc. But when I look at a Product inside the Products specialist I want the views Properties, Associated Files, etc. I like the idea of making the Views of a ZClass my starting point because at least it already filters according to the role a user might have. Any other ideas/comments? Roché

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(no subject)
by vspdo＠aic.net.au 09 Jan '01

09 Jan '01

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WikiName Overloading (RE: [Zope-Annce] ZWiki 0.8.1 released)
by Jay, Dylan 08 Jan '01

08 Jan '01

Here's the beef: Want to use ZWiki but have a slightly different version of what you want a wikiname to be? In my case I wanted to include TLAs as wikinames as my industry is full of them and its really handy to have to automatically hyperlinked so anyone can give the definition and references easily. To enable this I created a patch to ZWiki that will look for a property in the aquisition path called WikiNameDefinition. If found, this string property is treated as a regexp that is "or"ed with the standard wikiname regexp. This is done at runtime so you can change the wikiname over a pages lifetime. I would like this patch included so that I can take advantages of new ZWiki releases without rehacking the source each time. I'd like to motivate the author to include this feature in the next release. How much interest by others is there for such a feature? > -----Original Message----- > From: Simon Michael [mailto:simon@joyful.com] > Sent: Monday, 8 January 2001 9:29 PM > To: Jay, Dylan > Subject: Re: [Zope-Annce] ZWiki 0.8.1 released > > > "Jay, Dylan" <djay(a)avaya.com> writes: > > What are the disadvantages that you see? > > Nothing specific with your patch - just a general concern with feature > bloat and preserving simplicity and generality which makes me want to > consider how each new feature fits into the overall picture. I > haven't yet had time to do that for this particular enhancement. > Feel free to cc this thread on zwiki.org or the mailing lists; > discussion of this issue from you and others can help me get to the > "ready to integrate" stage. > > Regards, > -Simon >

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Re: [Zope-dev] filename extension boundary="------------865D189079029FB9A426EFA9"
by Dieter Maurer 08 Jan '01

08 Jan '01

Olaf Zanger writes: > Dies ist eine mehrteilige Nachricht im MIME-Format. > --------------865D189079029FB9A426EFA9 > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii > Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Please do not post MIME messages! > expr="fac_browse_method.sql(id=10)"> zope gernerates an error. >dtml-in expr="_.getitem('fac_browse_method.sql')(id=10)"> It is an FAQ. You would have found the answer in the searchable list archive, too. Dieter

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ANNOUNCE: PartitionedFileStorage
by Shane Hathaway 08 Jan '01

08 Jan '01

For all who are interested in breaking database size barriers without moving to Oracle or Berkeley Storage, here's something to try out. http://www.zope.org/Members/hathawsh/PartitionedFileStorage I *highly* recommend you back up Data.fs before installing. What is known to work: - Reads and writes of logical files greater than 3 GB on versions of Linux that support only 2 GB files. - Undo and packing. - Fast random reads and writes. - Using simple binary concatenation to move back to a standard single file. - Using PartitionedFile completely independent of Zope or ZODB. What has not been tested, but will very likely work: - Tranalyzer. - Putting the partitions on different physical devices. (Poor man's RAID :-) ) What couldn't be tested by my limited resources: - Platforms other than Linux. - Running this on a busy Zope site. (No, www.zope.org is not running PartitionedFileStorage. :-) ) BTW to all in the U.S., Happy Thanksgiving! Shane

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