-----Original Message----- From: Joshua Brauer [mailto:joshua@brauer.org] Sent: Tuesday, October 19, 1999 10:36 AM To: michel@digicool.com Subject: Zope Portal Toolkit

Michel,

Is it possible to get any news on the toolkit? I'm in the final stages of bidding a project that will be finished this quarter and one of the main requirements is portal related stuff. I can offer a much more solid quote if I know whether it will be released anytime soon (or even betas of it) or if I'll need to roll my own.

The toolkit is currently in the elaboration phase. At the moment, I am busy modeling the architechture, capturing use cases, evaluating risks, and doing some prototyping. As soon as I cross the Ts and dot the Is on a customer project I am working on, I will put a few more hours into the Toolkit model and publish it to the zope-dev list. I can promise that the model will show up this week sometime. I'm hoping that this model will clarify many of the concepts people have about portals. I would like to point out one important thing however, the Toolkit is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of tools. While the toolkit *may* come with an *example* portal, the portal is not the end product, the tools and model are. Further (and this is addressed to everyone) while I want/need as many ideas from the community to go into this, I won't have the capacity to respond to blue-sky ideas unless those ideas are backed by solid use cases, risk assesments, and detailed explanations *based on the model*. This is not to say I want to stiffle anyone, and brainstorming can be very fruitful, but our resources on this project are so thin that I cannot afford to elaborate other peoples ideas if they do not immediatly strike me as good ones by either 1) being a damn good idea and obvious to a fool like me, or 2) you justify your idea in the context of the existing model. None of this is to say you shouldn't speak your mind, I'll be happy to you know if I don't think your idea is clear enough to include in the development without further elaboration on your part. And, of course, the discussion and elaboration of blue sky ideas is totally encouraged, I just won't have enough time to chime in on the elaboration. So I'll get back to work on my part, the model, so that we can all take a look at it and start cracking. -Michel