[Zope] ANNOUNCE: Zope 2.3.0 alpha 1 released...

[Brian Lloyd]

Hello all,

  As promised, Zope 2.3.0 alpha 1 is now available. You can 
  download it from Zope.org:

  http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.3.0a1/

  This release contains a number of important new usability 
  features, and also marks the first release where a 
  substantial amount of the work done happened in the Fishbowl 
  on dev.zope.org. Some highlights of this release:

        - Python Scripts are now part of the Zope core. Big whopping 
          kudos to Evan Simpson for all of the work he has put into 
          this! Having Python Scripts in the core will allow people 
          to much more easily separate logic and presentation (and 
          get that logic out of DTML!) More information and prototype 
          documentation for Python Scripts can be found in the 
          dev.zope.org project:

          http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/PythonMethods


        - The process of creating an initial user at install time 
          has finally been fixed. Before you had to create a superuser, 
          login as the superuser, create a normal manager, logout, then 
          log back in as the normal manager. This was obtuse and caused 
          big problems for newbies who would log in as the superuser and 
          start trying to work immediately (leading to errors since the 
          superuser cannot own objects). 

          This process is now much more sane. Now, at install time a 
          default initial manager (not a superuser) is created. The 
          superuser has been renamed to the "emergency user" and is 
          not even created by default. If you ever have a need to log 
          in as the emergency user, you can use zpasswd.py to create it.


        - The new security assertion support has been checked in. For 
          more information and an updated version of the "Zope security 
          for developers" guide see the project on dev.zope.org:

          http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/DeclarativeSecurity


        - Added new getId() method to SimpleItem.Item. This should 
          now be used instead of referencing 'object.id' directly, 
          as it is guaranteed to always be a method and to always 
          return the right thing regardless of how the id of the 
          object is stored internally. This relieves DTML writers of
          the contortions they previously had to go through to handle 
          varying cases of 'id' being a method or an attribute.

        - Improved Ownership controls. Now you simply choose whether
          or not to take ownership of sub-objects when taking
          ownership. Implementation details about whether ownership 
          is implicit or explicit are no longer forced on the user.

        - Unit testing infrastructure for the Zope core. PyUnit has been 
          checked in, and a utility has been added that will allow us to 
          incrementally begin accumulating (and running) test suites. The 
          new testrunner.py in the utilities directory is a basic utility 
          for running PyUnit based unit tests. It can 
          be used to run all tests found in the Zope tree, all test suites
          in a given directory or in specific files. The testrunner will 
          be used to ensure that all checked in tests pass before releases 
          are made. For more information, see the docstring of the actual
          testrunner.py module.

  For more information on what is new in this release, see the 
  CHANGES.txt and HISTORY.txt files for the release:

       http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.3.0a1/CHANGES.txt

       http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.3.0a1/HISTORY.txt


  *Please note* that we do not build binary distributions for alpha 
  releases - the alpha is available as a source release only. When we 
  move into the beta period for 2.3, we will build and distribute 
  binary releases.



Brian Lloyd        brian@digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909              
Digital Creations  http://www.digicool.com