[Zope-CMF] expandable/collapsible tree/outline documents from STX/reST

[Colin Leath]

I'm attempting to make either (1) a new CMFDocument type or (2) a
script that can process the default CMFDocument to create a
collapsible/expandable (e.g. msword outline view) view of that
document.

I would like the document to be able to be composed using STX or reST
(http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html)

In the simplest implementation, the document/script would take the
following (STX):

                    o category 1
                        
                        o 1.1 Some text here-- could be quite long.
                    
                        o 1.2 Some text here-- could be quite long.
                    
                        o 1.3 Some text here-- could be quite long.
                    
                            o 1.3.1
                    
                            o 1.3.2
                    
                        o 1.4
                    
                    o category 2


and produce the following:

                    + o category 1
                        o 1.1 Some text here-- could be quite long.
                        o 1.2 Some text here-- could be quite long.
                      + o 1.3 Some text here-- could be quite long.
                            o 1.3.1
                            o 1.3.2
                        o 1.4
                    o category 2

Where each of the elements in the list that has sub-elements can be
clicked to show or hide the contents below. The formatting of this
tree would preferably be specified using ZPT [zope page templates],
and would (someday) also allow for the use of javascript trees.


What I've done so far:

I've created a ParsedXML document:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<category title="body">
    <category title="intro">
    
    some long stx here...
    
    </category> 
    <category title="categories">
      <category title="most salient overall">
        x. finish this project 
    
        x. physical well-being 
    
        x. relationships (?) 
    
      </category>
      
      <category title="most important overall">
        x. things to look forward to.
    
             <category title="subsubcat">
    
               x. test 1
    
               x. test 2
    
               x. test 3
    
             </category>
     
      </category>
     </category>
</category>

 

And following the example in zpt_example.zexp, created a tree
document which behaves more or less as I'd like.

The remaning problem is making the source document easy to create!
(Currently I use VIM and its folding option. Just today I found:
http://www.troubleshooters.com/projects/vimoutliner/)


In getting more familiar with the StructuredText product, in
particular, by following through thre readme, it appears that stx
documents should be able to be manipulated like I was manipulating the
parsed XML, e.g.:

    StructuredTextNode objects support the read-only subset of the
    Document Object Model (DOM) API. It should be possible to process
    'StructuredTextNode' hierarchies using XML tools such as XSLT.



If I follow option #2 above (a script to process CMF document), I
expect I'd take the editable body from the CMFDocument, create a nodal
object suitable for use with my tree page template.

If not using reST, I might also add a script-created table of
contents (reST has this feature).

I'm trying not to spend my whole life attempting to code what I want.
Has anyone else already done this? Do you have any pointers or
suggestions on the easiest way to achieve this functionality?

I would want to create something I could use on
zettai.net/freezope.org (so I don't have to pay to run my own zope
instance)--that is, it would have to either be a script I could add on
my own, or written well enough that they'd add it as a product.

Thanks for any suggestions!

Would zope-dev be a better place to post this email?

Colin