[Grok-dev] Introducing Grok / KSS : feedback after 1 week

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey there,

Thanks for the feedback! Feedback is always very welcome, and I'm very 
happy you are reporting on your experiences.

Sebastien Douche wrote:
> Hi there,
> A small post after familiarized Grok (+ KSS) in my company, with
> Godefroid (__gotcha) as Guest Star.
> 
> + Using Grok is easy.
> 
> + Using KSS is very easy.
> 
> - Lack of KSS support for Zope 3 application (not Plone).

Could you elaborate? Perhaps Godefroid can also describe what he thinks 
the plan should be.

> - no support of Python 2.5. The "process" here is using Python 2.5 only.

The Grok trunk supports Python 2.5. In fact Grok 0.13 should run in 
Python 2.5 too, but it's unsupported. We should work on getting a 0.14 
out of the door where we make Python 2.5 official (but not required).

> - Learning visualization machinery is a rough time with z3c.form :
> view, skin, layer, pagelet, widget, manager...

Agreed. Grok itself doesn't force you to use viewlets or pagelets or 
skins or layers, but I take it z3c.form does? Pagelet support is 
something we should add to Grok somehow - perhaps by making the standard 
grok.View smarter in some way instead of by introducing a grok.Pagelet, 
though.

> - Grok doesn't work with zopectl debug. Testing commands with
> interactive environment is a great place to understanding Zope3
> (introspection reveals useful information about your program's
> objects).

This is a bad bug that was revealed. We should investigate how to go 
about fixing it (without having to turn off the admin ui..).

Is there a launchpad issue for this?

> - Where is Paster? It adds a smart error page (with interactive debugger).

This has been a long-standing wishlist item. Philipp promised us a 
document that described The Plan so other people can go and implement it 
with his guidance, but so far he's been quiet. :)

> Conclusion
> ~~~~~~~
> The try is transformed, we are going to use Grok but there are still
> improvements to make it more accessible ;). 

What's a "try is transformed"? :) I'm glad to hear that you're going to 
use Grok!

I agree fully we should continue to improve Grok. We've come a long way 
but we're far from done yet.

> Furthermore, we will use
> grokcore.component for non Zope3 components/modules to facilitate
> integration in Grok in the future.

These non-Zope 3 modules are intended to fit into a Python application, 
or a Zope 3 application or a Zope 2 application?

> The future
> ~~~~~~~
> Now, we're developing a prototype, so the watchword is simplicity. For
> December, the need is a "solid Application, robust and strongly
> tested" (c)(tm). Thus, we will need rapidly of :
> 
> - megrok.z3cform. I see 3 use cases :
> 1/ need to basic forms, with "defaults" behavior.
> Goals: 101 course for beginner, prototyping.
> 
> 2/ basics views/forms with "complete stack".
> Goals: Grok installs all the necessary, and adds facilities for
> modification (skin, layer) or adding personal layout (forms,
> pagelet...)

Could you elaborate on 2? Grok has everything but pagelets, I think. Or 
do you mean it should be very easy to include z3c.form support as well? 
I think someone should create a megrok.z3cform. :)

> 3/ access to z3.forms power.
> Goals: deep customization

z3c.form integration, with simple usage for beginners, has been on the 
wishlist for a while. It'd be great if people could work on this. I 
think you are thinking in the right direction mentioning both 1/ and 2/ 
- it should be simple with defaults, but the power should still be there.

> - megrok.rdb
> Facilitate SGBD data access, with or without SQLAlchemy.
> Goal: simplification

I'm using this now in a project, so I'll be working on this quite a bit 
(where needed) this month and next. Any contributions are of course 
appreciated - discussion on this list.

> - kss.core
> Using KSS with Grok / Python 2.5
> Goal: focus on Zope 3 / Python 2.5 only. 

> The major improvement for us is megrok.z3cform. If the package is not
> available for November, we want paying a core developer to make the
> job. Same thing with kss.core for pure Zope3.

Oh, uhh. I'm a core developer, but we have a few of them around here now. :)

Regards,

Martijn