[Zope-CMF] Re: Getting started with CMF

[Charlie Clark]

Am 21.11.2006 um 16:03 schrieb yuppie:

> Hi Charlie!
>
>
> Charlie Clark wrote:
>> I've been on the list for a while but it mainly seems dev traffic.  
>> I hope it's okay to ask normal user questions!
>
> Sure. The CMF is not focused on 'normal users', in the first place  
> it is a framework. CMFDefault is a sample implementation, its UI is  
> not used by many people. But you are welcome to use CMFDefault and  
> ask your questions.
>
>> Is there a "getting started with the CMF" anywhere? I've done some  
>> fairly extensive searching but not come up with a great deal. As  
>> I'm fairly familiar with Zope I'm quite happy with the  
>> administration side of things but struggling more as a user. I  
>> realise Plone is CMF+ and lots of the Plone documentation is also  
>> applicable to CMF but if there is something out there I've missed  
>> I'd appreciate a link! And if there isn't I'm planning to turn my  
>> own notes into one.
>
> Some documentation fragments are in http://svn.zope.org/CMF/trunk/ 
> docs/, but they were not touched for many years. Don't know if they  
> are useful.

Thanks! Better than nothing.

>> Regarding the CMF itself - is there any point in refactoring some  
>> of the ZPT's to use CSS?
>
> We plan to replace all skin methods and templates by Zope 3 style  
> views. All forms should be reimplemented using zope.formlib, so  
> most templates will become obsolete. We could need help with this  
> new UI, but working on the old one doesn't make much sense.

Now, where have I heard that one before! ;-) Okay. Which version of  
CMF will be like this?

>
>> And would it make sense to break out the user controls from the  
>> content itself?
>
> I don't understand what you mean. What do you propose?

I was doing some work on the main_template and it seemed that the  
user_bar and menu_bar  context_actions, etc. would be a hindrance to  
anyone not wanting to change their look and feel. So, as with the  
news_box and the calendar_box I think it makes more sense to have  
them included as macros from specific templates.

Some things I've hit with my first steps:
Something went horribly wrong when used some non-ascii in the site  
properties (ZMI) throwing the usual "non-ordinal" error. Thing is the  
error persisted even after I corrected the mistake and I can no  
longer enter any non-ascii even using the correct page. I assume that  
page has someone been tagged as non-utf-8 despite this being the  
default encoding. I remember looking at the ZPT source on a related  
issue. Non-fatal as I was easily able replace the site with another  
instance.

I created a default site without calendar functionality and then  
realised I needed it to be able to enter events. I added the calendar  
tool to the site root but that didn't make it visible as a content  
type for my users. While at this stage it doesn't really matter as I  
can start again it has got me thinking about adding functionality  
later on.

As for what I'd like to be able to do: customise the homepage to  
include some content from elsewhere in Zope - ie. a football league  
table. As I don't want to include this stuff on every page I  
obviously don't need to patch main_template. Do I add my own  
index_html in the site root for this?

Thanks

Charlie

--
Charlie Clark
Helmholtzstr. 20
Düsseldorf
D- 40215
Tel: +49-211-938-5360
GSM: +49-178-782-6226