[Zope-Annce] Zope News for October 1, 2001

Mon, 01 Oct 2001 22:59:11 -0400

The Zope News for October 1, 2001

by Chris McDonough (chrism@zope.com)

(also available online at 
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/ZWN/ZWN-2001-10-01)

Welcome to the Zope News!  The top stories this time around include:
Zope 2.4.1 final released, Zope's CVS repository opened up to
community contribution, Zope security bug found and fixed, Zope wins
WebTechniques Web Tools award, OzZope gets going, and Zope.org Member
areas need some attention.

And now for something completely different...

Front Matter

   This is a two-week-belated release of the Zope News, which means it
   covers the entire month of September plus a day.

   I believe I speak for Zope Corporation and the Zope community in
   extending condolences to the people who lost friends and family in
   the attacks in New York and at the Pentagon on September 11.  These
   events serve to remind us how small we really are as well as to
   remind us how large a difference just one person can make.
   Hopefully we will gather strength from our communities, recover, and
   welcome better days in due time.

Zope Core Software Development and Releases

   The final Zope 2.4.1 release was put up for download on September 4.
   It's available from http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.4.1 .

   The venerable Zope "Collector" bug tracker has been down for several
   weeks due to a hard disk crash in which most of the issue data was
   lost.  Ken Manheimer has established a new project to get a
   replacement online tout suite.  It's available at
   http://www.zope.org//Wikis/DevSite/Projects/CollectorReplacement .
   The Collector is dead!  Long live the Collector!

Software Development Proposals and Projects

   Michael Bernstein's SecurityJihad proposal has changed its name to
   SecurityCleanup due to recent events.  It can be seen at
   http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/SecurityCleanup

   Richard Jones' work on a proposal for a "Batteries Included"
   distribution of Zope for Mac OS X and Windows

(http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/BatteriesIncludedDistribution).
   has sparked many peoples' interest.  A discussion seems ready to
   ensue on the Zope Packagers' mail list
   ( http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-packagers/ ).

   The ComponentArchitecture development project
   ( http://www.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture )
   is probably the proposal most likely to have a visible impact on
   Zope.  Many comments have been gathered within its Wiki this month.

   Two "Enterprise Zope" proposals were released by myself which deal
   with extending Zope's "forensic" logging capabilities to include
   data like memory usage and CPU utilization
   ( http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ExtendedForensicLogging )
   as well as an additional proposal about "tolerating" memory leaks
   and Zope "hangs" in production
   ( http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ToleratingHangsAndLeaks 
).

   A proposal for "pluggable" splitter implementations for the ZCatalog
   was created by Andreas Jung.  Having pluggable splitters could make
   the task of cataloging of non-English text much easier.
   http://www.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/PluggableSplitters

   Brian Lloyd is championing a proposal for allowing mappings to be
   created on a per-Folder basis between content types and file
   extensions. 
http://www.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ObjectTypeAssociationAndDeathToIndexHtml

   Matt Kromer has gotten busy developing a proposal for extending the
   default Zope user folder to better handle local roles.

http://www.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/ExtendedUserFolderForLocalRoles
   .

Security Notices

   A new security hotfix for Zopes 2.2.0 - 2.4.1 was released on
   October 1.  The issue solved by the hotfix involves the "fmt"
   attribute of dtml-var tags. Without the hotfix, Zope does not check
   security access to methods invoked through "fmt". This issue could
   allow partially trusted users with enough knowledge of Zope to call,
   in a limited way, methods they would not otherwise be allowed to
   access.  It is recommended that those running the effected versions
   of Zope apply the hotfix.

   For more information and to download the fix, visit
   http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/Hotfix_2001-09-28/security_alert

Documentation Development and Releases

   Pierre-Julien Grizel and Olivier Deckmyn's book "Zope" (in French,
   Eyrolles) has been available for some time now (since July it
   seems), but its had not even the inkling of a mention in the Zope
   News.  Let's fix that: http://zope.editions-eyrolles.com/ .  Looks
   like a good (and long!) one for all you French-speaking Zopers.

   Nicolas Pettiaux is launching a project to translate the Zope Book
   into French.  He's looking for folks who want to help.  He has a
   Source Forge project set up at http://sourceforge.net/projects/zopedocfr/

   Someone has translated the Zope Content Manager's Guide (ancient, I
   say!) to Italian.  http://www.zope.org/Members/ubik-art/wiki/ZCMG-it

News Summaries

   Seb Bacon and John Edwards cry for help doing CMF list summaries:

    "Jon and I could really do with some help from anyone with any time
    who's interested in the CMF.  It's quite time-consuming, and I
    think we've only managed one summary in the last 6 weeks.  Thing
    is, I don't think anyone's really got the time, and this is always
    going to be a problem with this kind of effort."

   If you've got the time, please give them a hand in summarizing CMF
   maillist traffic.

   The Zope-dev maillist summary was also not released this month.

Zope Corporation Goings-On

   After much attention to lawyering, Zope Corporation has opened up
   the Zope source code CVS repository to external contributions!  This
   is a momentous occasion in Zope development.  Until now, checkin
   privlege to the Zope source code was held solely by members of Zope
   Corporation.

   Individuals from an initial seed group were extended the opportunity
   to have CVS checkin access.  Folks who are known to have accepted
   the invitation are Steve Alexander, Chris Withers, Andy McKay and
   Stephan Richter.  It's likely that ZC will work out the kinks in the
   external contribution process using the members of this initial seed
   group.

   Committers can make checkins to both Zope and the CMF.

   Information about the process of becoming a contributor is available
   from http://dev.zope.org/CVS/ContributorFAQ .  Guidelines for new
   committers are available from
   http://dev.zope.org/CVS/CommitterGuidelines .  A more general
   description of the Zope development process is available from
   http://www.zope.org/CVS/ZopeDevelopmentProcess .  A general
   description of the same data for CMF is available from
   http://dev.zope.org/CVS/CMFProcedures .

   In case you couldn't tell, we're very excited to be allowing direct
   community contributions to the CVS repository!

   Tres Seaver is the Zope Track chair of the 10th Annual International
   Python Conference ( http://www.python10.com/ ), in Washington DC,
   happening in Frebruary.  Sign up for the conference early and meet
   all the Python and Zope folks!  (Be warned that there's a small
   extra charge not covered by the conference admission to actually
   view the live Tim Peters, however.)

EuroZope Goings-On

   The http://www.eurozope.org website appears to be misbehaving at the
   moment, so I'm unable to tell if anything has changed.  (Cop out!)

Zope Sightings

   There was a long string of messages on comp.lang.python midmonth
   that dealt with the "suitability" of Zope for large corporate
   websites and extranets.  A near flamewar ensued over something
   almost unrelated to Zope, but when that was over, lots of folks
   praised Zope and some took the opportunity to slight it for various
   reasons.  Search groups.google.com for zope on Sep. 7 - 10.

   Zope won WebTechniques Magazine's 2001 Web Tools Readers Choice
   award in the category "Infrastructure", sharing the somewhat bizarre
   stage with editors' choice Mac OS X and Honorable Mentionee IBM's
   DB2.  http://www.webtechniques.com/wtawards/2001/

   Two new sites about Zope have sprouted up this month: Zope Forum
   ( http://www.zope-forum.org ) and MetaZope
   ( http://pluggable.metazope.org/metazope ).  The former is a PHP site
   run by EasyNet, and appears to be a site that allows discussion
   *about* various Zope maillists.  The latter is a spiffy-looking CMF
   site that doesn't have much content yet, but looks great.

   The venerable ZopeZen weblog site ( http://www.zopezen.org ) run by
   Andy McKay has had a brain transplant.  Whereas before, ZopeZen was
   run on Squishdot, it is now powered by CMF.  It also makes CMF look
   great.

   OzZope ( http://www.ozzope.org ) is a new Australian Zope regional
   advocacy site.  Its keepers have this to say about the site:

     "OzZope.org provides a new site for the emerging Zope community in
     Australia.  Join in the development of a growing community
     focussed on bring the benefits of Zope to a range of application
     areas and a collective Zen"

   There was a meeting of the DC Zope/Python User's Group (ZPugDC) on
   Sept 26 at which Guido presented new features of Python.  I was
   supposed to bring a projector.  I shamefully forgot about the
   meeting entirely, and 30 - 40 people were forced to cram into a room
   built for 10 to get a look at Guido's presentation as a result.  I
   heard it went well.  Many, many heartfelt apologies to everybody
   that was crammed in there.  I really, really, royally screwed up and
   I feel awful.  :-( More information about ZPug and the Sept 26
   meeting is available from http://www.zpug.org

Zope.org Meta Matter

   The Zope.org website had its best month (by volume) since the heady
   days of March.  5,218,317 hits were recorded to the site in the
   month of September.  Webalizer traffic statistics output for the
   systems that make up www.zope.org is available at
   http://ns1.zope.org:82/ .  I suspect this may be at least partly the
   result from being linked from a few high-profile media sites in
   September.

   It's rumored that a demo version of the new Zope.org software that's
   been so widely discussed
   (http://www.zope.org//Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/CollaborationEnhancement)
   will be showing up Real Soon Now.

   NOTE!  As a result of the migration to the CMF version of Zope.org,
   some object types that exist on the current Zope.org will not exist
   on the new site.  Most of the content in Member folders will be
   migrated to the new Zope.org automatically, but some items (such as
   DTML methods, XML Documents, and ZTopics) will be intentionally
   "left behind".  If you've made use of a Zope.org Member area, to
   ensure that all of your data is migrated, you may wish to read
   Martijn Pieter's pronoucement on the matter and act accordingly:
   http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/100298.html

Zope.org Almanac

   The Zope.org Almanac lists select new or updated content spotted on 
Zope.org since the last release of the Zope News.

   Selected News Items

     Bug-Fix for PackageProduct patch

       http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/PatchKit/news-4.1.3

     ZUG Switzerland Kick-Off Powhow

       http://www.zope.org/Members/gregweb/ZUGS_koph

     ZShrink demonstration/bug tracking site and new release

       http://www.zope.org/Members/codestackers/ZShrink/zshrink_demo_site

     zOpen Directory 0.3 released (new product)

       http://www.zope.org/Members/CodeSyntax/zOpenDirectoryNewsItem

     ZMySQLDA-2.0.8 Released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/adustman/News/ZMySQLDA-2.0.8

     ZUserFolder 0.8.1 Released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/tmclaugh/zuserfolder_news_0.8.1

     Searchable External Objects (PDF's,MS-Word and more)

       http://www.zope.org/Members/tmclaugh/ExtDocument_1

     Australian Zope UserGroup - first meeting

       http://www.zope.org/Members/dlutzy/ozzope-meeting01

     ZQuest 1.0.0 beta 2 was just released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/srichter/zdpNews/zQuest1.0.0b2

     Wing IDE 1.1b7 + Zope

       http://www.zope.org/Members/sdeibel/wing-zope-news7

     PatchKit bugfix

       http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/PatchKit/news-4.1.4

     exUserFolder has been updated for 2.4

       http://www.zope.org/Members/TheJester/RandomJunk/exUserFolder_0_6_0

     World Trade Center Collapse: photos from eGenius

       http://www.zope.org/Members/egenius/wtc_911

     MatLab DA & Method Released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/srichter/zdpNews/matLabDA0.2.0

     Latex Method 0.1.0 released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/srichter/zdpNews/latexMethod0.1.0

     Graph Method 0.1.0 released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/srichter/zdpNews/graphMethod0.1.0

     Membership, CMF and exUserFolder collide.

       http://www.zope.org/Members/TheJester/RandomJunk/exUserFolder_0_7_0

     NIP Launches Personal Zope Hosting Option

       http://www.zope.org/Members/NIP/PersonalZopeHosting

     Zope training in Paris, France, Oct. 15-18

       http://www.zope.org/Members/sf/zope-train-1

     Localizer 0.6.1 released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/jdavid/news/Localizer061

     MetaPublisher 1.2.6 released

       http://www.zope.org/Members/beehive/MP1dot2dot6.html

   Selected Updated or New How-Tos

     Dtml-tree update

       http://www.zope.org/Members/rscanon/dtml-tree

     Automatically export folders using cron

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fritz/howto_export_folders_using_cron

     Automatically compress Data.fs using cron

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fritz/howto_compress_datafs_using_cron

     Protect Manage Access Using RewriteRule

http://www.zope.org/Members/march/howtos/ProctectManageAccessUsingRewiteRule

     Debugging Zope with Wing IDE: Installation and Setup

       http://www.zope.org/Members/sdeibel/wing-debugging

     Debugging Zope Products with Wing IDE: A Tutorial

       http://www.zope.org/Members/sdeibel/wing-detail

     Setting up Zope as FastCGI under Apache on Debian

       http://www.zope.org/Members/ajlouie/fastcgidebian

     Configure Apache Virtual Hosts and Zope using SiteRoot

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fritz/howto_apache_and_siteroot

     Only one index_html

       http://www.zope.org/Members/march/howtos/OnlyOneIndexHtml

     kernel: table is full (english)

       http://www.zope.org/Members/pasquall/20010907002

     Installing Zope-Perl on Debian

       http://www.zope.org/Members/ajlouie/zoperl

     Advanced Production Site Setup with ZEO

       http://www.zope.org/Members/dshaw/AdvancedSiteSetup

     Virtual Hosts via Apache (but nearly all content in Zope)

       http://www.zope.org/Members/mwr/VHosts_With_Zope_Default

     How-To connect to a WinNT-MSSQLServer from a Linux-Zope

       http://www.zope.org/Members/zorton/zope_linux_to_mssqlserver

     Yet Another FastCGI How-To: single-server, no virtual hosting, Zope 
serves root content

       http://www.zope.org/Members/zigg/YetAnotherFastCgiHowto

   Selected New Or Updated Software Products

     Portail Pour Tous (Portal For All)

       http://www.zope.org/Members/dgeorgieff/popoto

     Openflow

       http://www.zope.org/Members/vds/OpenFlow

     Photo and Photo Folder

       http://www.zope.org/Members/rbickers/Photo

     backup_zope.fcm

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fritz/backup_zope

     compress_datafs.fcm

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fritz/compress_datafs

     MySQL Database Documentation

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fquin/MySQLDBDocumentation

     SQL Blender

       http://www.zope.org/Members/adustman/Products/SQLBlender

     Structured Text Document

       http://www.zope.org/Members/philikon/STXDocument

     ZClasses to Python Products

       http://www.zope.org/Members/MikeW/ZtoP

     DBObjects R2O-mapping framework

       http://www.zope.org/Members/srichter/Products/DBObjects

     Znolk SQL Wizard: A Wizard that creates forms for manipulating SQL data

       http://www.zope.org/Members/zwork/Znolk_SQL_Wizard

     CMF-friendly Audio object

       http://www.zope.org/Members/bowerymarc/CMFAudio

     ReplaceSupport

       http://www.zope.org/Members/shh/ReplaceSupport

     ExtFile/ExtImage

       http://www.zope.org/Members/MacGregor/ExtFile

     Formulator

       http://www.zope.org/Members/faassen/Formulator

     Replicated FileStorage

       http://www.zope.org/Members/htrd/ReplicatedFileStorage

     ZShrink

       http://www.zope.org/Members/codestackers/ZShrink

     MultiPageForm

       http://www.zope.org/Members/lemuren/MultiPageForm

     Zope Cascading StyleSheets

       http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/ZStyleSheet

     My Media Manager

       http://www.zope.org/Members/gittew/MyMediaManager

     CMF-based PropertyManager-like objects

       http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/CMFPropertyCore

     Psycopg Zope Postgres Database Adapter

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fog/psycopg

     CMF-based MailMessage and MailFolder objects

       http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/CMFMail

     CMF-based Address Book

       http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/CMFUsrManOrg

     ZBabel Translation System

       http://www.zope.org/Members/TheJester/ZBabel

     KebasData: grabs data from any URL

       http://www.zope.org/Members/kedai/KebasData

     Zope Controller GUI

       http://www.zope.org/Members/richard/zope_controller

     GenericUserFolder (GUF)

       http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/GenericUserFolder

     Radius-based User Folder implementation

       http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/ZRadius

     Zope Chat example product

       http://www.zope.org/Members/jwashin/ZRTChat

     User Manager

       http://www.zope.org/Members/Ioan/UserManager

     Zope Unicode Support

       http://www.zope.org/Members/htrd/wstring

     MailHost Bcc HotFix

       http://www.zope.org/Members/regebro/mailhostbcchotfix

     Quick & Easy Zope Portal

       http://www.zope.org/Members/Ioan/QEportal

     Navigable Folder

       http://www.zope.org/Members/fquin/NavigableFolder

     Datagrok Document

       http://www.zope.org/Members/datagrok/DGDocument

     ZSwGenerator

       http://www.zope.org/Members/sherpya/ZSwGenerator

     Extensible User Folder

       http://www.zope.org/Members/TheJester/exUserFolder

Zope@Zope.org Mail List Summary for Sep 1 - 30

   People can't get enough of drinking from the firehose that is the
   Zope@Zope.org mail list!  There've been roughly a bazillion messages
   posted since August 31, 2001 (the day of the last Zope News).
   Selected interesting messages and threads include those below.

   Jan-Frode Myklebust asks about database connection pooling and
   a lively discussion ensues:

    http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098905.html

   Leland Myrick inquires if Zope can and should be used in an
   inventorying system.  Somebody says no!:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098903.html

   Mitchell Modell kicks off the seemingly monthly discussion about
   HTTP basic auth and why some browsers show the rendered version of a
   page instead of a management screen:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098916.html

   Jerome Alet answers Robert Rotterman's question about how to upload
   a batch of files.  Some discussion about alternate mechanisms
   ensues.

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098919.html

   Darran Edmundson asks when to opt for a "backend DB" over
   ZClasses and gets some weaselly (but correct!) answers:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098944.html

   Tony McDonald asks about load balancing with ZEO/Apache on Solaris
   and gets a wealth of information out of Sean Upton and others:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098948.html

   Trevor Toenjes asks if there's a way to capture a referring URL that
   is not subject to fakery and gets a thumbs down.

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098960.html

   Mitch Pirtle asks how to do distributed development with Zope and gets
   answers ranging from skins to CVSMixin.

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098963.html

   Chris Withers asks which is better for Zope, MySQL or PostgreSQL.
   The unavoidable ensues:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098966.html

   alex@quad.com.ar asks how to use ZPT with DreamWeaver and gets the
   obvious answer first (use file extensions, even though they're
   unnecessary in Zope):

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/098997.html

   Dan Shafer asks the ever-fun "when does the ZODB run out of steam"
   question, and I do my best to answer:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099012.html

   Vincenzo Di Somma announces his company's OpenFlow workflow engine,
   and this kicks off (of all things!) a discussion about how sad
   Zope.org's search feature is:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099052.html

   Kevin Lewandowski asks if there is any way to emulate Apache's "deny
   from" directive using ZServer only and gets some really weird and
   useful answers (I just would have said no):

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099173.html

   Trevor Toenjes kicks off a discussion about using click-stream
   analsys tools with Zope.

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099273.html

   David Lutz wonders why Netcraft delisted so many Zope sites in
   September:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099477.html

   Kerekes Lajos wonders how he can use ZCatalog with non-English text.
   Much discussion about the ZCatalog "splitter" follows:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099646.html

   Tres Seaver asks for submissions for papers for the 10th annual
   International Python Conference "Zope Track":

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099705.html

   Sean Upton talks about scaling media sites after the September 11
   disaster causes high hit rates on many folks' servers.

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/099810.html

   Marc Lindahl asks about steering ZServer startup messages to
   syslog and gets some tips:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/100070.html

   BwanaZulia imparts his wisdom on the design of Zope
   sites:

     http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2001-September/100110.html

End Matter

   The opinions expressed in Zope News are solely the authors', and not
   the opinions of Zope Corporation, The Zope Community at-large, or
   the Spanish Inquisition.

   If you or your company are doing something interesting with Zope,
   please submit a blurb to Zope Weekly News for possible inclusion by
   emailing Chris McDonough ( mailto:chrism@zope.com ).

   For prior editions of the Zope News, see
   http://www.zope.org/Documentation/ZWN/

What Is Zope?

   Zope is an open source web application server that can be used for
   managing website content, building intranets, and creating portals.
   For more information, see http://www.zope.org

   Zope is built using the Python programming language.  For Python
   information, see http://www.python.org

-- 
Chris McDonough                    Zope Corporation
http://www.zope.org             http://www.zope.com
"Killing hundreds of birds with thousands of stones"