[Zope-Coders] Re: [ANN] Proposed Features for Zope 2.7: OrderedObjectManager

[Maik Jablonski]

Toby Dickenson wrote:
> On Wednesday 04 December 2002 8:29 pm, Shane Hathaway wrote:
> 
> 
>>I am in favor of an OrderedFolder class that people have the option of
>>using.  It's not necessary that it be in the core, since installing a
>>Zope product is very easy.
> 
> 
> I think a common problem would be that someone starts using an ordinary folder 
> before the need for orderedness is known. We would benefit from some way of 
> 'upgrading' a Folder to an OrderedFolder without disturbing its contents.

Hi,

Toby made the point!!!

 > I think a common problem would be that someone starts using an
 > ordinary folder before the need for orderedness is known.

That was the way I learned it. I solved orderness with "wired" 
properties and so on and wasn't happy with this state, because I didn't 
knew of "OrderedFolder". Someday I found Stefans "OrderedFolder", but 
then I couldn't migrate my applications, because there were so many 
references to the meta_type 'Folder' (think of objectValues('Folder')), 
which I was not able to fix at instant. And copying all my stuff to 
OrderedFolders would modificate the "bobobase_modification_time", which 
I need for my documents... (yes, I know... Don't rely on 
bobobase_modification_time... same mistake as starting with the 
default-Folder, but I cannot solve this in due of time).

So I wrote OrderedObjectManager which monkeypatches the default 
ObjectManager... and all problems went away, besides the problem of 
monkeypatching...;-). Of course I don't need ordering for all my 
folders, but then I don't use this feature. To turn the argument around: 
I don't need "renaming" for all my folders, but it's no problem to have, 
isn't it?

Including "orderness" in the default folder will help people preventing 
doing this lousy 
"add-a-order-property-or-have-a-wired-naming-for-ordering-schema". 
That's what the proposal tries to solve... For me "orderness" is one of 
the main advantages of ZOPE in prior of a simple file-sytem. For me it's 
a 
"this-is-a-ZOPE-feature-which-not-many-other-competitors-have"-argument. 
If you want to sale ZOPE, you should think in terms of cool features. 
And a OrderedObjectManager is a really cool feature.

-mj