Michael Bernstein wrote:
In any case, ZTables does indeed have the 'hierarchy' functionality that we want, but it has yet to be released. A related proposal called 'Topics' popped up on the Zope site yesterday: http://www.zope.org:18200/Members/Amos/TopicProposal , which seems to apply ZTables Hierarchies to ZCatalog albeit with a somewhat different interface.
This is EXACTLY what I've been waiting for! I knew you guys would get around to it eventually. With the minor quibble that it would be nice to have logical operators besides 'OR' to chain queries within a Topic, this proposal seems perfect.
Well, if you are using only one ZCatalog, you can AND queries by combining them. Then all you really lack is OR. Actually, a NOT would be pretty handy too. One concern I have is making the query building and manipulation too complex. Probably we'll start with a pretty simple scheme and expand it later.
The one thing that is unclear is whether you can set properties on a Topic, or if you would have to place a Document with properties on it into the Topic.
I imagine a Topic as similar to a Folder in that you can set arbitrary properties on it.
BTW, as this is so useful in contexts other than news/informational, I propose changing the name from Topics to 'Category' or 'ZCategory'.
I agree that these are better names. Thanks for your ideas. -Amos
Amos Latteier wrote:
Michael Bernstein wrote: <stuff deleted
With the minor quibble that it would be nice to have logical operators besides 'OR' to chain queries within a Topic, this proposal seems perfect.
Well, if you are using only one ZCatalog, you can AND queries by combining them. Then all you really lack is OR. Actually, a NOT would be pretty handy too.
One concern I have is making the query building and manipulation too complex. Probably we'll start with a pretty simple scheme and expand it later.
Fair enough. I did have one other idea though: Will Topics accept parameters passed to them? Put it another way, will we be able to build dynamic topics? Another idea: Will it be possible to 'Topic-ize' the results of a ZSQL method? they return a flat list.
The one thing that is unclear is whether you can set properties on a Topic, or if you would have to place a Document with properties on it into the Topic.
BTW, as this is so useful in contexts other than news/informational, I propose changing the name from Topics to 'Category' or 'ZCategory'.
I agree that these are better names.
I had a light go on: I can use Topics in combination with the Calendar tag and acquisition to build custom calendars! Given: /root /Topic_1 /Topic_2 /Topic_3 /Calendar A URL like /root/Topic_1/Topic_2/Calendar/ should be valid and show me events in both Topics (or categories, whatever)! I can also see Topics being very useful in constructing heirarchical product catalogs... Cheers, all, and keep those ideas flowing! Michael
participants (2)
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Amos Latteier -
Michael Bernstein