[Zope-Annce] epoz 1.0 alpha1 released

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

Many of you have probably already enjoyed Maik Jablonski's fantastic 
visual editor Epoz. More than two months ago, Paul Everitt published an 
extensive proposal on refactoring Maik's original code base.

After having received positive feedback and funding by the Dutch-based 
Zope expert and creator of Silva Infrae (http://www.infrae.com), Paul 
Everitt (Zope Europe Association), Guido Wesdorp (Infrae), Philipp von 
Weitershausen (philiKON) and Geir Bækholt (Plone Solutions) started 
hacking, using the main concepts from the proposal.

After more than two months, we are now proud to release a first alpha 
version of what will be the next generation of the epoz editor.

What's new?

   - The core of the editor essentially is only a file-system based
   skin layer. Target-platform (Zope2, CMF, Plone, Zope3) specific
   skin layers can then do their customization based on core.

   - The richtext editing widget with its buttons and toolboxes is
   displayed using ZPT macros. This and the usage of CSS to define the
   looks of the editor makes epoz more customizable than ever. Using
   ZPTs also has the incredible advantage that epoz can even opened in
   a browser from the file system or be made available through Apache.

   - Translation is done using the i18n namespace suported by both
   Zope2 and Zope3 TAL.

   - Document centric editing and the option of synchronous and
   asynchronous, as well as data-oriented (POST) and document-oriented
   (PUT) saving.

   - Works as a drop-in product for Zope2, Silva, CMF 1.4, Plone (in
   the future) and Zope3 (in the future).

Where can I get it?

   You may download a tarball at the the epoz project homepage at
   Sourceforge:

     http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=84377

How can I use it?

   Please be aware that epoz 1.0 alpha a) is a complete rewrite of Epoz
   0.X and b) is alpha software.

   epoz comes with a great deal of documentation already. The
   INSTALL.txt file in the 'doc' directory should provide a quick
   introduction. Note that epoz 1.0 and Epoz 0.X cannot be used
   together in the same Zope instance.

   If you would like to see epoz 1.0 alpha1 in action without having to
   go through a long installation orgy, you may either download the
   tarball and open 'common/epozmacros.html' in your browser (yes, it
   works off the filesystem!) or visit the following URL (served by
   Apache, by the way):

     http://www.philikon.de/files/epoz/common/epozmacros.html

What to expect before 1.0:

   - Link and image toolbox:

     The original Epoz editor provided a toolbox for Plone users that
     was loaded in a browser pop-up window. Since epoz 1.0 puts a lot
     of focus on document-centric editing, it places toolbox elements
     such as a link or image browser and table creator right on the
     edit page. Results for link and image searching will be loaded
     asynchronously in a yet-to-defined XML format.

     In upcoming releases, we will provide asynronous server-side
     methods for link and image searching in Zope2, CMF, Plone and
     Zope3.

   - Plone integration:

     Although we have made an effort to integrate it with Plone
     1.0/2.0, we have seen that current versions of Plone does not
     allow an editor to take over for document-centric editing. Philipp
     has made a Plone Improvement Proposal (PLIP) to provide a visual
     editing architecture in Plone
     (http://plone.org/development/current/projects/PLIP5). The
     proposal has been accepted by the community and Philipp is
     currently implementing. It is expected that Plone 2.1 will be
     ready to be plugged together with epoz 1.0.

How to report bugs?

   As part of the process of moving away from Sourceforge for
   developemnt, we have set up a tracker at Codespeak.net. Feel free to
   report any bugs you encounter at:

   http://codespeak.net/issues/epoz/ (mind the trailing slash)

We are looking forward to your comments.
For the epoz developers,

Philipp von Weitershausen