[Grok-dev] Re: Page templates -- plone-style skins/ZMI?

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

Peter Hunt wrote:

> I'm developing a little message board application in Grok to wrap my
> head around it. If I, say, wanted to make this a generic forum
> application with customizable, overloadable templates (ala
> plone_skins) that an end-user can change via the ZMI (or a customized
> Grok ZMI), could Grok do it automatically?

Grok isn't intended to have a ZMI. It's intend to have admin screens, 
but they're not aimed to expose developer features like template 
customization. So, Grok is not able to do this out of the box, and 
making this possible is not currently a main goal of the Grok 
developers. We are focusing on the filesystem experience. That said, I 
do believe Zope 3 has some infrastructure (not GUI) to help with this. 
Philipp should be able to tell you more about this - Philipp?

Note that we're still thinking through the skin override story of Grok. 
We have some interesting ideas on template-language agnostic theming.

> Also, is there an acl_users in Zope 3, similar to Zope 2, and can Grok 
> use it?

Zope 3 has an extensive user authentication system, but explaining how 
to use it is beyond the scope of just an email (and I'd need to look 
things up). You may want to consult some of the published materials 
about it. As is usual with Zope 3 stuff, it's powerful and flexible, and 
could use some simplification for many basic use cases. I hope we'll 
expose this eventually in a simplified way in Grok. (working on this 
would make a good project)

> I'm using grokproject, if that makes a difference.

Shouldn't make any difference.

Sorry I had to give answers that are not very useful yet; Grok's still 
young in some areas.

Regards,

Martijn