[Zope-dev] Experimental Symbolic Link product/patch

[Ty Sarna]

From time to time there has been interest in some sort of symbolic link
feature for Zope. Well, I took a stab at it.

On zope.org in the contributed software section, you will find Pointer,
a symbolic link type product. Install the product, and apply the patch,
and try it out. Note that this has only been tested against 1.11.0pr1,
and barely at all even on that :-)

The target of a pointer is a Unix or URL-like /-sepratated string. It
can be absolute (leading /) or relative. It can contain '..'
componetents for parent links. Acquisition happens backwards through the
link, too. 

The demo.bbe contains an exported folder that shows off how a pointer
shortcuts the namespace, but still aquires through the link.  If you put
pointer_demo in http://www.yourhost.com/zope/pointer/demo, try accessing
http://www.yourhost.com/zope/pointer_demo/c/c1/p/a1/doca1. See how a1
and show_name are aquired because they are in the traversed path, even
though a and b/b1 are not in the URL.

I haven't thought much at all about the security implications of this,
so beware.