Hi Zope users!
We have to build a content/document management system for our company, and I have been assigned to look into this and make a start. The system has quite a few requirements, which I'll outline below.
Version Control: we need quite complex version control. Lets say we have document x. This document will be developed and worked on by multiple users. At the same time, this will also be translated into other languages. If a change is made to the English version, then that change will have to be made in other languages too. I think that in Version Control speak, the different languages can be thought of as different renditions.
Workflow Control: because of the number of people involved, we need to have a decent workflow control system. The workflow could be A->B->C->D, D rejects so back to B, B makes mods and sends to E for final review. Or something, the point is we need to be able to have quite a lot of control over it, and the workflow isn't necessarily a linear 'up and down the chain' type of thing.
Document Management - the system is all about documents. They would like the ability to organise the documents into different pages for people to download. They should be able to download older versions or different renditions. Also each document will be available only to certain groups or roles.
Our client is quite specific about what they require and how they want it to be presented, so ease of customisation and extensibility is a major factor. We have looked around at existing CMSes but have not found one that fulfills all of our requirements or that is customisable enough that we can fulfill our requirements with a bit of work. We looked at Plone, and then I decided we might be better off going down a level and building on Zope.
Does this sound like a good idea to you guys? Do you know of any better suited frameworks or even existing systems that we should use? Finally if we do settle on Zope, would we be wiser using the 2.x version or the 3.x version? I imagine that 2.x has more documentation and more addons (e.g. for versioning, workflow etc.).
Another consideration is that the skillset here is mainly in PHP and Java, however I don't think anybody is fazed by having to use Python if Zope is the best option for us.