[Zope-dev] Zope direction and 2.2 roadmap...

[Brian Lloyd]

Hi all.

Now that Zope 2.1.0 is out the door, we at DC want to let
the community know our direction and the "roadmap" leading
to 2.2. In a nutshell, our direction and focus will be on 
usability. Making it easier to get things done with Zope has
been a recurring theme on the lists lately, and we will be 
working to make progress on this front. For 2.2, here is the
short list of we will be working on:

  o Online Help System - Amos has been doing great work on
    a real honest-to-goodness online help system for Zope 
    that will make its debut in 2.2.

  o Python Methods - work will be done to include Evan Simpson's
    Python Methods in the Zope core. This should help a lot in 
    avoiding the headaches of convoluted DTML logic.

  o Site Objects - will make it easier to deploy "virtual sites"
    in the same Zope with far less effort than is required now.

  o The ability to associate ZClasses as "brains" for relational
    database data instead of having to write Python classes.

  o And of course, fixes for bugs and issues in the Collector.


We are expecting to have these things available in at least a
pre-release by the time of the Zope track at the Python Conference.

There are other usability initiatives underway as well. Rob and 
Amos have been doing a _lot_ of work coming up with a much better
and much more scalable approach to documentation that should have
a big impact on the quality and breadth of documentation. Work 
will also continue on making Zope.org a better resource with things 
like ZTopics (Yahoo-style directory views). And there are some other
projects percolating (which I can't talk about yet :) that will have
a big impact on usability.


Brian Lloyd        brian@digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909              
Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com