The question is, how much does Squishdot's functionality overlap the 'News' component of the ZPT?

Very little actually. News items were just demo ZClasses to integrate with the Catalog. Squishdot could easily surpass this. But there is a difference between threaded groups like Squishdot and what News items are supposed to be.

The current roadmap for the ZPT only includes a short description of each component (although we now know a lot more about ZCatalog by virtue of it's being released in alpha).

I think you'll see each piece be released separately honestly. Membership is unfortunately *much* more complex than we first envisioned. At least if we're going to make it useful for more than us. Right now it'd be nothing more than a "demo." We are working on this.

Another area of possible overlap is between the membership component and the various roll-your-own cookie-based login systems that people are implementing.

LONG story :-) Membership has become a multi-headed hydra unfortunately as it has grown to encompass more and more features. It really does need refactoring, and I'm not sure I'd want to own up to its current state.

In short, can we have a more detailed roadmap for each of the ZPT components?

We'll try and get something more out in the next week or so. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli Python Powered Digital Creations, Inc. | petrilli@digicool.com http://www.digicool.com