[Zope-Annce] November 16th Zope Weekly News

Thu, 16 Nov 2000 21:53:28 -0500

2.2.3 on its way, tips on how to use the Zope Book,
PTK 0.9.2 released with lots of bug fixes,
Documentation Process feedback requested,
and the whys and wherefores of Zope.org.  

The opinions expressed in Zope Weekly news are solely the authors',
and not the opinions of Digital Creations, The Zope Community
at-large, or the Spanish Inquisition.

If you or your company are doing something cool with zope,
"submit it to the Zope Weekly News",
   mailto:zope-web@zope.org
for possible inclusion.

And Now For Something Completely Different:

---

Zope Status

  by Brian Lloyd

Summary

  Tying up the  2.2.3 release

Recent News

  (Reprint from last week but worth repeating - we really want 
  feedback on this!) 
  Documentation is currently a weak area for Zope. Ironically, the 
  problem really isn't a lack of content, its a lack of organization 
  among those who produce useful documentation. The current
documentation 
  "process" is not well-defined, so Amos and Michel have started a 
  Fishbowl project to develop and formalize the process of producing 
  Zope documentation. The end result of this will be a well-known and 
  discoverable process that will allow the community to take better 
  advantage of the "documentation energy out there",

http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/DocumentationProcess/FrontPage

  Adam Davis' proposal for several "quick fixes" that we could make to 
  the Zope management interface to improve productivity in the 2.3
release 
  timeframe has become an "active project",

  http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ManagementInterfaceQuickFix

  Toby Dickenson has started a Python 2.0 Migration proposal - the idea 
  is to identify all of the issues involved in using Zope with 2.0 and 
  what we still need to do to make Python 2 "officially supported",

  http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/Python20Migration

Near Future  

  The evil "__call__" bug is now officially stamped out (thanks to 
  those of you in the community who tested the fix!), which was the 
  last bullet left before making the Zope 2.2.3 release. I expect this 
  to be out on Friday (Nov 16).

---

Documentation

  by Michel Pelletier

  All's quiet on the "book":http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB/
front.
  We're still getting good comments; special mention goes to Lee Hunter
  who sent us great editorial comments on Chapter 8.  We've gotten a lot
of
  comments along the lines of:

    1. I can't find out how to make a Python Method, and 

    2. I downloaded Python Methods from Zope.org but they don't work.

  The answer to the first question is: Python Methods do not come with
  Zope 2.2 (but they will come with 2.3), you need to get them and
install
  them.
  Normally you would get them from Zope.org, but the answer to question
  two is: The version of Python Methods on Zope.org is old, and it will
not
  work with the book examples.  You need to check Python Methods out of
  CVS in order to get the examples to work.  You can do this by
following
  the "instructions":http://www.zope.org/Resources/CVS_info and getting
the
  CVS "module for Python
Methods":http://cvs.zope.org/Products/DC/PythonMethod/ . 
  Sorry folks, we don't have any control over the release schedules for
the software, 
  so hopefully this gets updated soon to make it easier for you to
follow
  the book.

  This week Amos and I are pushing for the final effort on the new
  "Documentation
Process":http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/DocumentationProcess/FrontPage
.
  We need your comments!  We've gotten some good ones so far, but we
  need to make sure this jives with everybody, including the community,
  and *especially* the geeks at Digital Creations.  Check it out.

---

State of the PTK

 by Tres Seaver

 I have uploaded a tarball for the 0.9.2 release of the PTK; it
 can be found at:  http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK.

 * ZopePTK-0.9.2-src.tar.gz: Wizard and DemoPortal products
   are *only* available as export files.  Note that *many* changes
   are available only in the updated DemoPortal product.

 Please see the "Install notes":/Products/PTK/install.

Changes

 0.9.2 (2000/11/15)

  * Removed antique UML from snapshot tarball.

  * Cleaned up PortalFolder's implementation of the "metatypes"
    protocol required by ObjectManager (working on copy/paste/import
    issues).  Tracker #'s 116, 130, 131, 133.  (Note that some
    problems still remain, buried in the guts of Zope's paste
    machinery and acquisition/security interactions).

  * Restored content migration code (for pre-0.8 content).
    Tracker #129.

  * Added "expiration filter" to catalog searching.  Tracker
    #46.

  * Corrected interface breakage caused by changes to DublinCore
    implementation.  Tracker #'s 109, 114, 115, 119, 122, 126.

  * Implemented "browser sniff" in the 'css_aware' stylesheet
    code;  NS4 should get styles inline, while less brain-damaged
    browsers continue to get '<link href="...">' version.
    Tracker #124.

  * Added one-pixel, transparent 'spacer.gif' to all interfaces;
    may fix some "broken pipe" Medusa tracebacks.  Tracker #128.

 0.9.1 (unreleased)

  * New "Software Engineering" interface (soon to be the
    basis for a fishbowl/dogfood site).

  * Split DublinCore into three interfaces:

     - DublinCore, for external queries

     - CataloguableDublinCore (returns dates for better searching)

     - UpdatableDublinCore

    Added indexes/metadata to catalog for these fields.

  * Suppressed non-content (e.g., DTMLMethods) in folder_contents
    display.

  * Cleaned up some of PortalFolder's interface warts, and
    its registration as an addable object.

 Please direct questions to the Zope-PTK list (zope-ptk@zope.org),
 and submit bug reports (patches would be great!) and feature
 requests to the PTK tracker (http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/Tracker).

---

Zope Web

  -- by Ethan Fremen

  What's Up With Zope.org?

    Yesterday, Zope Newbies "Asked what was up with zope.org",
    http://weblogs.userland.com/zopeNewbies/2000/11/15
    Specifically, they wanted to know why it was so darn slow.

    The truth is that Zope has outgrown it's home. Zope.org,
    with its more than 10,000 objects, consumes between 
    "100-150 megabytes of ram",
    http://www.zope.org/manual/mem.png
    This is more than an average site would consume: we
    have a large number of pages that are fairly frequently
    visited, whereas most sites have a small number of very
    active pages.
    That's for the ZEO Client:  The storage server consumes
    another 50mb or so.

    When spiders hit us, all of our pages try to get loaded
    into ram, which (as the ZODB has nearly 600mb of "active"
    objects) leads to zope.org hitting the limit of physical
    RAM.

    I put in a robots.txt to block spidering and reduced the
    cache "recommendation" to 700.  The first was a good idea,
    the second was not, and is the proximal cause of zope.org's
    slowdown. I have since increased it to 2000, which seems
    to have helped quite a bit.

    I am working feverishly this week to move us to our new
    cluster, which should alleviate the problem. With multiple
    ZEO Clients running, I intend to make spiders hit one ZEO
    Client, while keeping the other ZEO Clients open for human
    use.

-EOT-