[Zope] mems-exchange.org Zope work

[Andrew M. Kuchling]

We went live with some revisions to our Web site last Saturday, and
some of them will be of interest to Zopeheads.  The most significant
new feature is a new version of the Sequence Builder, which is at:

    http://www.mems-exchange.org/z/process/builder/

Our site caters to designers of microfabricated devices, and we want
users to assemble sequences of process steps, which they then submit
to us for manufacturing.  The Sequence Builder is a Web-based
application for assembling sequences, sitting on top of our process
database, which is a set of Python classes, and your sequence is saved
using our Java database representation classes; Zope talks to Java
servlets using XML-RPC.  This makes saving/loading the ugliest code,
because there's DTML code + Python code + the XML-RPC parameters +
Java code involved.

Doing a Web-based user interface for this sort of thing is hard, and
our UI is still clunky in various ways; suggestions for improvements
are welcome.  I don't know of any other sites that tackle anything
this complicated, because this is harder than "I want X copies of book
Y"; instead, you're assembling a recipe where order matters.  If
anyone knows of sites that do something similar, we'd love to hear
about them; maybe we can borrow some UI ideas from them.

Anyway, feel free to play with the sequence builder.  Getting a Web
site registration is free, though you can't actually manufacture
anything without signing an agreement and undergoing a credit check,
but you can make sequences, save them, and load them up again; you
don't have to worry about getting a bill for $5000 in the mail.
Please report any bugs or problems you encounter (private e-mail only,
please, to either me or to webmaster@mems-exchange.org).  

	(DC people: feel free to add www.mems-exchange.org to the
"Zope exits" section if you like.  No credits page yet,
though.)

-- 
A.M. Kuchling			http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/
All the evils of publishing can be traced to one source -- copyright.
    -- Stefan Stykolt, quoted by Kildare Dobbs in _The Living Name_ (1964)