Hi folks. I'm working on a ZPatterns 0.4.2b1 release for the early part of the coming week, and intend to bug Ty into perhaps releasing an 0.9.0 beta later in the week. However, these versions are likely to have some (hopefully minor) compatibility issues with previous releases. Specifically: * We would like to drop support for Zope 2.1.x from here on out. I know at least one user has a production 2.1.x system, and I hate to strand them, but at least they can continue to use existing ZPatterns releases until their client can upgrade. Dropping 2.1.x support means that we may be able to get rid of DynPersist, which should be a big plus for ease of installation. It also means that we'll be able to start adding newer capabilities that take advantage of 2.2.x-isms such as getPhysicalPath()/restrictedTraverse(), etc. * We would like to drop support for Specialists directly containing data plug-ins. This feature was intended to allow for acquiring shared data plug-ins from within Racks, so that common attribute or sheet providers could be shared among Racks without copying. In practice, Ty and I have never once used this capability, and it could be easily replaced with the ability to "include" a SkinScript within another SkinScript, if we take advantage of 2.2.x-isms. * Related to the above, the "Link to Acquired Provider" and "Acquired ... Provider" objects would no longer be needed, since they exist only to make use of shared plug-ins contained in Specialists. We would remove these classes from ZPatterns, causing any existing instances to become "broken". Deleting these "broken" objects, however, would restore normal operations of the system. As you can see, all of these issues are somewhat interrelated. I wanted to post some advance warning of all this, so that if anyone has any objections, they would have a last chance to protest. :) The overall release plan at this point is that the only other major features planned in the 0.4.x series are content providers (mirroring virtual sub-objects from SQL, LDAP, or whatever) and local role providers (computation by an object of local roles applicable to a user). I do expect to add a few minor features in the way of easier SkinScript editing, and some hooks to allow help to be added to the management tabs which are auto-generated for PlugInGroups. The next big project will be documentation, now that the feature set and terminology is beginning to stabilize.