April 2001 - Zope - Zope lists

Re: [Zope] zope rant: It's all about delegation
by Luciano Ramalho 17 Apr '01

17 Apr '01

One word defines what Zope is all about: DELEGATION. If you work alone or your project is so rocket-science that it requires a team made 100% of highly skilled programmers, then it may be better for you to use plain Python and Zope parts (like ZODB and ZPublihser), Quixote, WebWare or your own framework. Most projects in the real world are not like this. Most sites must be managed and updated by users of varying skills. Corporate sites, intranets, content portals must be built with tools that allow easy and safe delegation of management powers to many people, from journalists and salespeople to web designers with little programming skills. If you can't delegate, you get backlogs, tech staff burn-out, frustrated users and unhappy customers. An interesting point: in another "Why not Zope" piece, Chuck Esterbrook says he prefers a syntax like the ASP and PHP <%%> tags than DTML. We believe DTML is actually a strong selling point of Zope. Combined with Python Scripts and SQL Methods, DTML encourages separation of layout and logic much better than ASP and PHP. To define dynamic templates, dtml-var, dtml-in and the occasional dtml-if are enough. With proper support of Python Scripts, complex DTML expressions can be avoided, making DTML very easy to read and modify by anyone who knows HTML. And ZPT can be even easier. In ASP and PHP it is very common to see SQL and HTML fragments embedded in the <%%> parts, which means that DBAs, programmers and designers all have to touch the same code to make changes. If your site is so small that one person has all three roles, then maybe you can be more productive hacking away SQL, HTML, PHP and client-side JavaScript all in the same document. But if your site is that small, you really don't need a content management system like Zope. In medium to large sites, there are never enough all-knowing sysadmin/perl-hacker/dba/web-designer old-style "web masters" to go around... So Andrew Kuchling's and Chuck Esterbrook's texts should really be called "Why Zope is not for me?" instead of just "Why not Zope?". Best regards, Luciano

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Customizing 404 errors
by Darryl Caldwell 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

Wondering if anyone has any input on how I can customize 404 messages that zope returns for files not found. I have reorganized my site with zope and I would like to let users know to revisit my main page. "Black Holes are where God divided by zero." -- Steven Wright

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Another question about LoginManager (or similar products)
by l.p.arnesen＠usit.uio.no 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

After getting LoginManager working and following the steps of the LoginManager with SQL database HOWTO I realized that this was a solution to store administrators of the website in a database. I'm going to create a public service that requires all the users to register with a username and a password. After doing so they must log in every time they use the service. I really don't want to write the user login code if it exists in some form of a module or a product. Is there some examples of how to use the LoginManager to do this? PS: I guess I'm looking for a authentication mechanism like the one Mailman uses for it's administration pages. Yes, I can just take a look at how Mailman does it, but I guess there are some less complex examples to take a look at somewhere. :) -- Lars Preben

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Alternative irc servers?
by Andy McKay 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

My firewall wont let me connect to irc.zope.net at work. I can get into other servers such as Webnet though. Has anyone had any success with another irc server so I can get into #zope during the day and waste all my time at work? -- Andy McKay.

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RE: [Zope] zope rant
by Paz 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

I agree. This person is misguided and either a) Does not have the skills in Python the be able to understand properly what Zope can do and b) Have corporate requirements that go above and beyond what he expects from a package like Zope. I worked for Compuware's Uniface lab for some time and can say that he probably needs to spend the millions of USD to buy Uniface instead of complaining about Zope. It provides the logical layers between data and presentation that he speaks about with the security, but were comparing apples with elephants now. I would suggest he also be aware of Uniface's (multi)million line-plus of coding in their kernel, as opposed to Zope that is a small fraction of that. I'm a newbie myself and have built my own personal website entirely with ZSQl and DTML. As I learn Python, I go over the site and redo layers of it to fit the proper model that Zope can provide. I see no clear proof of his assertions against Zope as they certainly introspect that he has not taken the time to figure Zope out properly. Having worked for Tech Support at the Uniface lab, I've heard it all from customers. EVERYONE says how complex their application is... blah blah blah. 9 times out of 10, our specialists come back from the fields shaking their heads because the customers basically got caught in a corner by covering the exits with mountains made from mole-hills.... If your catch my drift.... Never blame the tools, screwdrivers can be useful for drilling holes, but only when you don't have a drill. Agreed, he has a point... I read his CV page about the MEMS exchange and albeit, Zope is probably not suited very well to his needs, since they made design decisions prior to Zope that greatly affect Zope's capabilities and behavior. But, he pays a great disservice to Zope users by not explaining this. I'm not a developer, so I'm not able to argue the tech attributes. I'm a project manager with little enough staff that I need to jump in myself here and there... and I love the experience of it. But the bottom line is that most tools like Zope can be exactly what you need providing the realization that certain steps need to be prepared first to align this decision. It sounds to me that he didn't have this opportunity and that's why Zope is downtrodden, but at Zope's expense, and not his own, which it should be. Unfortunate, but most development projects will undergo this 'rebuilding requirements' phase several times before getting it right. Its just unfortunate that he doesn't depict it as so. Paz -----Original Message----- From: zope-admin(a)zope.org [mailto:zope-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of matt Sent: Sunday, April 15, 2001 4:27 AM To: Win GO; zope(a)zope.org Subject: Re: [Zope] zope rant Seems very misguided, and I think perhaps he is just very confused. For one thing putting ZClasses and Zope Products in the same category dosen't make sense to me. I tend to write a lot of Zope products as python modules and with that I get grep, I get CVS, I get test suites ... in fact there are tutorials around somewhere that show you how to run ZPublisher for debugging, it's an easy step to build the test suite around that. Next the talk about "Much of the application ends up as DTML" ??? that goes against most people's Zope philosophy, where DTML is a presentation layer ..... if you are writing your application in DTML and it works then well done!! but I wouldn't want to debug it. There is also this confusion with "dynamic scope", one of the most fantastic things about Zope is implicit acquisition. Sure it takes a bit to get a feeling for, but once you are there you start to organise your hierachies of attributes and methods into an environment that makes sense, and which is very powerful. If he is trying to build as they say "complicated objects", then through-the-web DTML is not really what they should be trying to do. Writing a python product would be the more obvious path. And if he/she finds editing in a Netscape text box so horrible for dtml and PythonMethods, then perhaps they could use their favourite editor and the nice FTP server that Zope comes with ... :-) Matt

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Re: CoreSessionTracking
by Chris McDonough 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

Hi Uwe, Thanks for the concise explanation of the problem... I'm cc'ing the Zope list on this... it's best to keep this stuff on the Zope list because the message archive helps other folks out (including me! ;-) I think what's happening here is that the dtml-raise in the middle of the first snippet of DTML below aborts the ZODB transaction, and so the session data is never saved... Is there a way to prompt for authorization without doing a DTML raise? I've never used LoginManager... ----- Original Message ----- From: "Uwe C. Schroeder" <Uwe.Schroeder(a)contrada.de> To: <chrism(a)digicool.com> Sent: Monday, April 16, 2001 1:22 PM Subject: CoreSessionTracking -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Chris, I'm stuck so I write directly to you. Hope that's ok. I installed the CoreSession (recent version) on an unmodified Zope 2.3.1 installation. I created a session_id_mgr in the root folder. Besides this on (also in the root folder) i created a session data manager called SessionManager. What I'm trying to do is to use the session information in conjunction with the loginmanager to authenticate users based on session information (this is a customer necessitiy for some special reason). In my login dialog i placed the following dtml - code <:let data="SessionManager.getSessionData(create=1)"> <:call "data.set('Path',PATH_INFO)"> <:call "REQUEST.set('token',SessionManager.getToken(create=0))"> </:let> <dtml-raise "'LoginRequired'">  <:if "SessionManager.isTokenNew()"> <font class="FontWhite">New Token created</font><br> </:if> <:let data="SessionManager.getSessionData(create=0)"> <font class="FontWhite"> Path is <:var "data.get('Path')"><br> <:var "SessionManager.encodeUrl(SCRIPT_NAME)"><br></font> </:let> where the lower two <let> constructs are for debugging only and will be removed later. The both lower constructs output the data set above as expected. In the same page is a form for auth. It now looks like <form method="post" action="http://tiburon.i.contrada.de:8080/Beta/B_Fachkreise/DocCheckHandler" > <input type="hidden" name="<:var "SessionManager.getTokenKey()">" value="<:var token>"> < Here the rest ot the form > The object DocCheckHandler gets called as expected and the getToken() method returns the correct token as expected. BUT - there is no session data object available. The code of the DocCheckHandler looks like <dtml-var standard_html_header> <h2><dtml-var title_or_id> <dtml-var document_title></h2> <p> The token is <:var "SessionManager.getToken(create=0)"><br> <:if "SessionManager.hasSessionData()"> <:let data="SessionManager.getSessionData(create=0)"> Pathinfo: <:var "data.get('Path')"><br> items: <:var "data.keys()"><br> </:let> <:else> No Data Container </:if> </p> <dtml-var standard_html_footer> The token gets output as expected, but I never get a data container. I tried this with internal and external data storage. I never get the session data back. Am I stupid or did I miss something ? Your help is appreciated Regards Uwe C. Schröder - -- Uwe C. Schröder ConTrada Consultants Lindenstrasse 15 Tel/Fax: +49 8294 80070 D-86477 Adelsried Mobil: +49 172 8532352 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.4 (GNU/Linux) Comment: For info see http://www.gnupg.org iD8DBQE62yo+TJbO78VG0aIRApOJAKC8crtHLwSvEU9/ah3htFs1/t7AAQCfca7y f1lqd6USL/m/dNdUIERI9h4= =USme -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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copying images + hit or save detection in Zope ?
by Jason Cunliffe 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

Q1. Is there any reliable way to know if someone has copied an image, a file or saved an HTML page from their browser using "Save as.." or similar? Q2. If yes, how would you suggest using Zope to catch events and store statistics on this. Create a ZCatalog with an updated 'saved_hits' property for each item would be ideal. Q3. Whether it is possible or not, how would you suggest using Zope to keep count of hits to Zope pages/objects? The application is a Zope site with a lot of graphics. Contributers [Artists] will upload often, according to their schedules and whims. Designing for ecletic low-maintenance freedom here.. There will be gallery and styudio areas for browsing the art. Instead of making people jump through a bunch of tedious form actions to get their images adn to store download data on the server, I thought it might be friendlier to just tell them 'save as..' any ideas? --Jason ___________________________________________________________ Jason CUNLIFFE = NOMADICS['Interactive Art and Technology']

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Threads Optimizing Linux.
by Aitor Grajal Crespo 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

Hello , my question is a bit complex ( for me ). I have : - Linux RH 6.1 - python 1.5.2 --with-thread (source compiled) - zope 2.2.x or zope 2.3.x (source compiled) In any program in python with Linux (inclusive Zope), the threads are processes,i.e, they consume memory and don´t share it. In Windows this is different. In Linux, I have Zope running with 4 Threads. I have five processes and everyone consuming about 12 MB => 12 * 5 MB = 60 MB In Windows in the same situation I only have one process and the threads share the memory, which is the most desirable situation. Why?? Does anybody know a solution for Linux, in order to have only one process and threads sharing memory, as in Windows?? Thanks. Aitor /_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Aitor Grajal Crespo Director General e-mail: aitor.grajal(a)inetsys.es INETSYS, S.L. ETSI Informática Ctra. Colmenar, km. 15,500 28049 MADRID SPAIN Tfno : (34) 91 348 22 66 - Fax : (34) 91 348 22 66 http://www.inetsys.es /_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/

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Re: [Zope] Cobalt cubes and Zope
by Luke Tymowski 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

hello, > I was wondering if Cobalt and Zope are compatible. I may wish to run my Zope application on a Cobalt cube but it currently is not configured to run Zope. It comes pre-installed with Apaches 1.3. Any known issues? Perhaps there is a company that provides a turnkey zope+Apache solution. Also, I'm sure that is is possible to run multiple sessions of Zope. Can someone direct me to where this information is kep. I checked the database for ISP stuff but did not find exactly what I need. it depends on which Qube you're going to use. a Qube1 is barely usable by a handful of people; a Qube2 is ok for development and a small web site; a Qube3 is ok for several thousand visitors a day. the above assumes you're running Zope on a Qube. A Qube publishing static pages can support more viewers. also keep in mind that if you recompile Apache you risk breaking your warranty. I have a Qube1 and Qube2. Both can run Zope. Neither well enough for me to run a public web site. luke

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Re: [Zope-dev] REQUIRING Python 2.1??
by Cary O'Brien 16 Apr '01

16 Apr '01

A small comment on the zope upgrade to requiring Python 2.1 One to think about is who will be effected, and how... New users w/ windows/nt: They have to download and install python anyhow, so is it any harder to get the latest version? If you search google for "download python" and take the easiset path, which version do you end up with. Existing users w/ windows/nt: How hard is it to have both versions of python running on one machine [I have no idea]. New Linux users: This may be the hardest group. They will already have Python 1.5 installed, and may not really understand installing rpms and stuff like that. Existing Linux users: Some will have no problems with a new version of python, others may be confused. Other Unix users: These people probably know enough to handle the python upgrade. So... 1) Someone with lots of Win/NT/W2k experience needs to figure out how to support 2 pythons and new/old zopes. 2) Instructions for downloading Python 2.1 should be made very clear. Perhaps even with links at the zope download site. 3) Common error cases (I guess that would only be new zope/old python) should provide very clear error messages on all platforms. 4) People on the zope list should have canned replies ready to go for the inevitable. 5) DC should put the right spin "upgrade takes advantage of exciting python 2.1 features such as ..." on the upgrade and get the information out into the electronic press. Fire away... -- cary

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