[Zope-dev] Zope Feature discussion

[Anthony Pfrunder]

[Sorry for the length of this post...]

Hi,

To fill people in on what I'm working on I've decided to post this
long-winded "My Zope Directions" piece.  At the moment, Zope has excellent
aquisition, permissions and information hiding for Products.  I propose to
extend this for tags and filesystems.

I propose that we have a new Product, called TagMethod, which allows you
to define a new tag (a la Mr Zippy).  This TagMethod can be added to the
Methods area of a Zclass to enable the Tag for the Zclass.  In addition,
any sub-objects within an instance of this Zclass will be able to use this
tag.  This would most likely involve XML type interfaces.  

To make this totally useful, we may need to change the dtml syntax
slightly:

	<dtml-var xx> 	--> 	<dtml:var xx>

This allows XML style namespaces.  So an interesting use would be
overriding the UL and LI elements in the XHTML namespace to provide
animated bullets without modifing the content.  (this would work saying
<dtml:var XMLstylesheet>, where XMLstylesheet registers UL, LI tags which
are called when the document is rendered).

A "spin-off" advantage of doing this is to allow automagic documentation
of tags.  Simply add a doc-string and the Zope Help system will pick it
up!

The second change I propose is a "Control Panel" Product which replaces
the current one but acts like a User Folder.  Then, you can add
permissions to Products and allow users down the chain to add their own
Products by creating a "Control Panel".  This would also reduce Control
Panel clutter as Products can be placed where they are needed.  Also, you
can then subclass (via Zclasses) the Control Panel to create more user
friendly Add Object systems.

Finally, we need a subclassable Filesystem object.  When you insert one of
these it "captures" the transations and stores them in the local
filesystem.  This way, you can "plug" filesystems together.  Also, it
allows better support for server-farms (servers can share filesystems).  A
useful example of this would be a corporate public website.  Here, the
top-level website defines and serves the overall "style".  Subservers and
their public fs databases are "mounted" into the main one.  When a change
in a subserver is made only the subserver fs is updated but the master
server still "sees" the change.  So,

	Public server:
		+ Marketing 	--> Marketing.fs	|
		+ Tech support	--> Support.fs		| Protected SMB,
							| NFS or NDS
	-------- firewall ------------------------	| file server

	Marketing (internal) server --> MPrivate.fs:	|
		+ Public stuff	--> Marketing.fs	|
		+ Private stuff --> MPrivate.fs		|

	...

Needless to say, they don't have to be Zope fs's.  You could, for example,
store some properties as an OLE stream inside Word documents.

PS Amos: This is also posted you-know-where

Cheers

Anthony Pfrunder
Zope Community Development Partner