[Zope-dev] How should an ideal Zope IDE look like?

[Joachim Werner]

Hi! 
 
I am aware that I am adding another 2-3 man years to the wishlist, but here 
are some ideas I had lately: 
 
A Zope IDE should be much more than just a programming IDE adapted offer 
highlighting etc. for Zope's languages. It should be an RAD tool similar to 
what MS Access does for databases. There are similar tools for commercial 
frameworks like Enfinity from Intershop ... 
 
I'd like to model an application using UML or similar (the UML class diagrams 
are not perfect for Python or Zope, but they could be a starting point). 
 
I'd like to be able to define workflows graphically. 
 
I'd like to "click together" components. E.g., if I need a user authentication 
module I can choose from all adapters that provide that interface (LDAP, 
SQL-based, etc.) 
 
It should be possible to use hand-written HTML of course, but there should be 
a set of templates that give my applications a decent look & feel to start 
with. 
 
Forms (or more general, schemas), can be defined easily, either in a 
Formulator-like way or graphically (i.e. you see the actual form fields on the 
screen when working on the form). 
 
 
> My main concern would be it's adaptibility to custom content types. 
 
For that you'd be able to use basic building blocks and add your own 
additional attributes (probably using annotations). All in a nice graphical 
front end. 
 
All documentation about interfaces and APIs should be available wherever it 
makes sense, e.g. I can query for all components that are registered for a 
certain interface and view the interface definitions. 
 
Joachim