[Zope] Zope 2.4.0 bugs and comments

[Joachim Werner]

Hi!

> I was trying to decide the best place to report bugs and comments, and
this
> looks like the best place to me.  I didn't get inspired by the bug
collector
> running on an old site.  Maybe I've made the wrong choice, and if so
please
> email me!

Still, the collector is the right place for serious bug reports. However,
IMHO it makes sense to ask the list first (as you did) because some of the
bugs might just be "issues" you have because of an installation problem on
your machine or so.

> First, I kept hearing all kinds of buzz about Zope, but I didn't really
know
> why should I use Zope.  There is no documentation with a clear and short
> reason why.  Like, you can do this in Zope, but try this on <blah>.  Or
you
> can do this in 2 minutes in Zope, but how long does it take you on <blah>?
> Plus a short statement of what Zope is (and web services development
> framework is too fuzzy for me).

You are perfectly right with that. And it is hard to change. It's that
"three-sentence question" I've heard almost daily when we started our
business: "Tell us in three sentences why we should go with you and why the
stuff you are using is better than other stuff ...".

A good place to find relatively compact success stories is the Case Studies
page at http://www.zope.org/Resources/CaseStudies. The problem with writing
these "Zope is better than X" things is that they have to be written by
people who are not completely into Zope yet. To take an example from the
Linux community: There's nothing less credible than a Linux hacker telling
you that Linux is sooo much better than Windows NT because you don't get a
bluescreen every day, because

a) the Linux hacker probably hasn't seen a Windows machine for years and
b) Windows NT doesn't get a bluescreen every day, only once in a while ...

> So I decided to get this thing and see for myself.  I must say, I AM
> IMPRESSED!  Now that I see what it is, there is a lot to like.

So tell us in brief what exactly you like. Then we can put it up on the
zope.org site ;-)

> 1.
> When you try to logout, it just doesn't work!

The bug with this is that the logout button hasn't been completely removed
... Technically speaking, there is no bug with Zope. It is impossible to
actually log out from a "BASIC AUTHENTICATION" session, so the workaround
was to send an "authorization required" request to the browser. This does
not work too well, as you have seen ...

> 2.
> When I took ownership of a folder, I was no longer able to relinquish
> ownership back to the way it was: unowned.  I think I should be able to do
> that if I have the "Manager" role.  This is pretty minor I guess.

I am not sure if this is a bug or by design. It might be a security thing
...

> 3.
> When doing the Tutorial (it's a great Tutorial BTW!!  Kudos!) I noticed
that
> a few times Zope failed to render the page correctly and displayed chunks
of
> ASCII from the dtml page, below the ZOPE logo.  I have a feeling it might
be
> connected to having or not having a newline character as the last
character
> in the dtml file.

Never heard of that one. More details please ;-)

> 4.
> I've seen much really weird behavior from Zope that I can't reproduce.
I've
> seen things like utterly garbled screen after installing latest Hotfix
8/4.
> I've seen Zope get really confused about my "login" status sometimes and
> display some folders with "index_html" as if I merely wanted to look at
them
> instead of manage/edit them.  I had to play some tricks with the login
> process to get it to recognize that, indeed I am logged in, and please,
show
> me the contents of the folders instead of rendering 'index_html' for me.
And
> there were more things that I just can't remember.  The general feeling I
had
> was that it was flaky and fragile and that I had to avoid doing certain
> things to stop it from breaking.

Those are all very strange and uncommon things. I guess most of them have to
do with your browser cache settings or so. Remember that your browser might
cache a site with you logged in even if you are not any more and display it
wrongly. If they were real Zope bugs, I am sure they would have been
reported earlier ...

>
> 5.
> The link to latest 8/4 Hotfix on the zope.org is broken.  I had to get the
> correct link from the mailing list archives.

?? Where is it broken? For me it worked ...

> I am using Zope 2.4.0 with Python 2.1.1 on GNU/Linux (Libranet distro,
based
> on Debian potato) and on Solaris 8.  The same weirdness is observed
> regardless.

see above ...

> I think overall that Zope is one of the coolest things I've seen for the
web
> development, but it really could use some polish.

That's for sure ;-)

> I also have one question: is it possible to use Zope in a multi-user
> environment where each user can have their own virtual Zope domain,
located
> in their own account on a unix box?  What I mean is the usual setup by web
> hosting providers where they create 'public_html' for each account, and
each
> person can manage their own web site separately.  I know zope can allow
this
> through the browser, but is it possible to achieve more separation and
more
> virtualization, so that each user can appear to me the manager of / (root
> folder), and so that each users Zope development files and DBs could be
> located on their own respective accounts?  I would be interested to know
the
> answer to this.

Most of what you want is possible:

Just as an example, you can set up Zope using Apache and mod_proxy. It will
then redirect your users' web addresses to a Zope instance running in their
home directories. However, all these Zope instances are not "virtual" but
real. They might however share their basic Zope installations, so you will
not have to apply hotfixes more than once etc. If you go this way, all your
users' data is physically separated, but you don't get a management view of
all of them in the Zope Management Interface.

The alternative solution is having one Zope instance and folders for each
user. In that case, the users' data is in a single data.fs file, and they do
not get their own choices of which products to install etc. It is feasible,
but rather complicated, to mount a separate storage for each user that is
located at their home directory. But that won't get you much benefit. The
advantage of that setup is that you can control the users and their folders
from a single place.

There are plans to extend Zope in the way you suggest, so that one can
create "real" virtual Zope instances within a master Zope that can have
their own data source, own choice of products and ZClasses, etc. I think it
wouldn't be a big deal, but it has not been worked on yet ...


Joachim

P.S.: This is not an "official" answer from the Zope community, just a
member's personal comment ... ;-)