I think this is an excellent alternative to handle the UI aesthetics. The other part of this issue (for me) is the acquisition of these objects. Even if they are hanging out in the root, I would still like to be able to put templates in a template folder, scripts in a scripts folder etc... and not have to go through a great deal of fanfare to acquire them. It would be nice to be able to define mappings (or not) for the acquision process to evaluate once the trail hits root and before it looks in REQUEST. This feature of TF is really nice (just dangerous). Eric
You know, the funny thing is that TF really accomplishes the goals of a ZMI/UI-improvement hack (unclutter a view of a folder to VISUALLY separate the software/content/presentation space) implemented, IMHO, in the wrong place. I would think there is another way that a Folder UI could be uncluttered without the magic of TF, and that is add "translucency" (items are there, but obscured from view) to the UI layer - that is, the ability to VISUALLY unclutter different users' views of objects in a folder via ZMI; views could be stored per user.
For example, you could select ZSQL Methods and RDB connections in a folder to be hidden from everybody but the Database programmer; you could keep these and Python Scripts obscured from the view of a content person or presentation designer, etc. Well, they wouldn't be hidden, but visually 'compacted' and relegated to a small drop-down box at the bottom of the page to unclutter it... so the standard tabled object list wouldn't iterate over objectIds() or objectValues(), but instead a higher-level filter function. A complimentary filter function would render the 'hidden' objects as a sequence as well.
__ZMI manage_main Now:______________________ ________________________ ===\===\===\===\======== <--- ZMI tabs % :::::::::::::::::::===
TP.NAME..... .SZ. ..LM.. []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------
[RN][CT][CP][DL][I/E][SA] <--- Buttons for checked
__ZMI With Translucency:___________________ ________________________ ===\===\===\===\======== <--- ZMI tabs % :::::::::::::::::::===
TP.NAME..... .SZ. ..LM.. []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------ []---------- ---- ------
[RN][CT][][][][][Hide] <--- New HideBtn ________________________ Hidden Items: [Select Item... [v] [Open][Unhide][ViewAll] <--- Buttons for doing things ^ with hidden | items | +-----------> ViewAll => pop-up new window ____________________________________________
This would be more visually convenient. I'm thinking of trying to monkey-patch OFS.Folder to just do this.
Of course, with these kind of modifications, for any given folder, there's no mandatate that anything need to be hidden at all. Thoughts?
Sean