[Zope-dev] A few words about revision history

[Marcin Kasperski]

[ I am Zope user, not Zope developer, I send this article first to zope
users list but people advised me to discuss it on zope-dev ]

The zope Undo mechanics is nice for clearing simple mistakes, but the
screens filled with 'manage_edit by ...' does not provide too much
information. What I would like is some high level website revision
history. Below I discuss some ideas, please comment on them.

Before details, main motivation: as the main zopesite manager (call me
Stan ;-) ), I give my users permissions to edit parts of the website.
But I would like to see their activities from the high level, with
reports like 'at day such and such Johny the Spoiler performed change
which he named "proofing our department pages" and this change touched
the following objects: ...' (looks like info about saving a version
enriched with info about objects saved).

1) I would like to disable the ability to edit anything outside some
version. I guess that specifying some permissions in configuration would
do, but before I spoil sth I would like to ask whether someone performed
such a configuration and how was it defined?

2) Would be great, if attempt to edit outside of version prompted
You are to edit this website outside any version. Choose to either
     join <.dropdownlist of existingversions>    [JOIN]
     create and join new version of name: .......[CREATE]
     cancel edits                                [CANCEL]

3) Is it at all possible to check, whether some version is currently
empty (no unsaved edits) or not - and if not, what is unsaved?

4) Is it possible (with current zope) to get changes history with manual
edits grouped somehow
(I'd prefer - instead of having 17 times 'manage_edit by tommy' - to
see '17 manage_edit's by tommy')

5) CVS-like tagging mechanizm would be nice. Seems that version control
is completely implemented, the only thing left is a method to add a
comment at some places of database history - and to provide a method of
browsing them.

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Marcin.Kasperski | error. (Parnas)                                      
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