[Zope] RE: Two newbie questions

[Amos Latteier]

 Michael Bernstein wrote:

> In any case, ZTables does indeed have the 'hierarchy' 
> functionality that we
> want, but it has yet to be released. A related proposal 
> called 'Topics' popped
> up on the Zope site yesterday:
> http://www.zope.org:18200/Members/Amos/TopicProposal , which 
> seems to apply
> ZTables Hierarchies to ZCatalog albeit with a somewhat 
> different interface.
> 
> This is EXACTLY what I've been waiting for! I knew you guys 
> would get around to
> it eventually. With the minor quibble that it would be nice 
> to have logical
> operators besides 'OR' to chain queries within a Topic, this 
> proposal seems
> perfect.

Well, if you are using only one ZCatalog, you can AND queries by
combining them. Then all you really lack is OR. Actually, a NOT would be
pretty handy too.

One concern I have is making the query building and manipulation too
complex. Probably we'll start with a pretty simple scheme and expand it
later.

> The one thing that is unclear is whether you can set 
> properties on a Topic, or
> if you would have to place a Document with properties on it 
> into the Topic.

I imagine a Topic as similar to a Folder in that you can set arbitrary
properties on it.

> BTW, as this is so useful in contexts other than 
> news/informational, I propose
> changing the name from Topics to 'Category' or 'ZCategory'.

I agree that these are better names. 

Thanks for your ideas.

-Amos