[Zope-dev] Re: Zope 2.7: OrderSupport for ObjectManager

[Chris McDonough]

On Tue, 2003-05-06 at 14:53, Maik Jablonski wrote:
> She creates lots of DTML, ZPT, PythonScripts in a folder (needed for 
> acquisition), adds several new objects etc. After a while she has a mess 
> of different objects, where it is hard to find the one she wants to work 
> on. So she clicks on "Types" to sort the folder by meta_types, "applies 
> this sorting" and moves the three PythonScripts she is currently working 
> on to the top of the folder (no more scrolling every time to the buttom 
> of the folder etc.).

Oh, I see!  I didn't know that the use case was related to the ZMI UI, I
thought it was related to the objectmanager API and people getting
things back in some presorted order... apologies.

> This feature is something like cleaning up your desktop automagically 
> (sort all my bills, my lectures, my proposals, ...) and put the 
> important documents afterwards onto the top.

I see.

> I like the idea of "cleaning up", but I don't insist on the "Apply this 
> sorting" button. So let's drop it, because it seems to special for me in 
> the meanwhile...:)

It does seem handy, but I think it'd probably be better to leave it out
of the core if it's just for ZMI UI purposes... it might be better
implemented as a "skin" for normal folders.

I must admit that as I think about it, the whole ordered folder notion
(with or without this functionality) seems to be more about skinning the
existing folder UI than it is about creating a new slightly-different
metatype.  I realize by saying that I'm probably contradicting other
folks who made comments on the proposal, but something just doesn't feel
quite right about having two objects that cannot be interchanged without
data conversion when the underlying data structure is exactly the same.

Might there be some way we can provide hooks to allow people to more
easily build add-on products that modified UI code with this type of
functionality (e.g. prevent people from having to overwrite main.dtml)?

- C