[Zope-dev] My thoughts on the development process

[Joachim Werner]

Hi Martijn!

Formulator is a good case how things can work. You did the main design work
on your own. And that was very good. Then we had the chance to contribute
ideas for new fields etc. I now have my own FormulatorExtensions product
with stuff I could imagine being part of Formulator as soon as they are
really ready for it. Others added multi-page forms support etc. But all that
contributing and extending only works because there was a sane architecture
at the beginning. So the contributor doesn't have to answer the question
"How would I possibly like my forms?", but just answer questions that are
much more focussed, like "How can I add a WYSIWYG editor to text fields?".


It is possible, but painsome to do design work on the web or via a mailing
list ...


BTW: Just for the record:

FormulatorExtensions currently include:

- a Link field that has a Javascript pop-up to fill it with local links from
a tree view of your site. The pop-up can be specified as a method. Also
works for choosing images from pools

- an HTML field with stripogram support (thanks to Dirk Datzert) and an
optional WYSIWYG editor (IE only)

- an internationalized version of the list field (to be able to translate
the list items via ZBabel)

- a size field for tables etc. (choose a unit like % or px, and add a value)


Joachim