[Zope-CMF] CMF Docs

[Dennis Allison]

On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, Erik Lange wrote:

> At 05:47 PM 4/5/02 -0800, Dennis Allison wrote:
> >A quick browse of the websites and review of the several books 
> >demonstrates that
> >there isn't much that's up to date.  Is there a quick reference guide of 
> >sorts?
> 
> Hi Dennis,
> 
> Is it something like this you're looking for ?
> 
> http://zopists.org/learning
> 

Not quite.  That doc is a useful collection of links to reference materials, but
its not what I'm looking for here.  What I really want is an overview of the CMF
design and some details on the API.  Something more than a feature list.
Something that is fairly current so that it really applies to the present CVS
codebase and not, say, the PCK. :-) 

For a current project with a tight deadline (is there every any other kind) I am
making major changes to customize.  I think the CMF is a good jumping off point
but it's far from a perfect match.  I will need to make substantial changes in
several places.

It's not always obvious from the code what function is performed where and what
the possible side effects of changes may be.  The impact of a small seemingly
insignificant change can be substantial.  Tracking down unintended consequences
is not fun.  

A simple example is the login/roles mechanism.  I need to have an administrative
account that creates accounts, assigns passwords, and assigns user-roles. 
user-roles are similar to Zope roles on the one hand (they control access) and
similar to user names (they can own things).  The administrator can reassign
user-roles among the pool of users.  Access rights and workflow contols need to
adjust themselves dynamically.  To make this work--it's a change in the
underlying model of CMF--I'll need to change code in a number of places, some
obvious, some not.  A roadmap would help.