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

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Martijn Faassen 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?

* Grok will have no ZMI, only an admin UI which won't allow for
   through-the-web development.

* Through the component architecture, Grok does allow the customization
   of components such as views, but not through the web. The
   customization happens by writing new components in a custom package
   and making sure that these override the standard ones. (Which reminds
   me that we need a better override story).

* If your application wants to be "generic" (whatever that means), the
   best thing to do is to give it a nice Python API that can be then be
   used from views and other components; that way it'll be much easier
   for people to provide their own views.

* If you want your messageboard application to adhere to a common look
   and feel that's determined by the user, you're entering a discussion
   that we Grok developers have to figure out ourselves still. Either
   way, it is certainly possible to use ZPT macros. So if every view in
   your application uses such a macro, others could easily change the
   look and feel of your app by customizing said macro.


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