[Zope-PTK] content states

[Shane Hathaway]

Steve Alexander wrote:
> 
> Portal Content with Multiple States at once
> -------------------------------------------
> 
> At present, content in the PTK stores its review_state as a single
> string, accessible as the attribute review_state.
> 
> The attribute review_state is indexed in a portal's SiteIndex as a
> FieldIndex.
> 
> I propose that the PTK's state handling be generalised so as to be able
> to hold many different kinds of state concurrently, and retain the
> current functionality of being able to search on content's state,
> without an explosion in the number of fields indexed in the SiteIndex
> catalog.

AHA!  I think you have just identified the bulk of what has been called
"pluggable workflow".  In a workflow, a document can pass through
different hands, each user performing such tasks as:

- Review before public posting
- Review before front-page posting
- Conversion to different formats (such as MSWord->HTML)
- Translation to other languages
- Spelling check
- Make read-only (the user is no longer allowed to modify the doc;
perhaps this should mean moving it to a different place)
- Grading by an instructor

Do you think content_state as a PersistentMapping would be rich enough
to handle all of these possibilities?

Shane