[Zope] Project FTP Site

[Jim Penny]

On Thu, Jul 26, 2001 at 10:39:10AM +0200, Reini Urban wrote:

Here is what I have done in this vein.

We have about 25,000 drawings, mostly mechanical and mostly
simpler than architectural drawings.

We have 4 servers on which drawings are held.

It was found several years ago that only the people who worked
intimately with some subset of drawings could find them.  Things
like to find a part number you had to know what machine it
was used for, and if used on more than one machine, what machine
it was created for.

So, several years ago, I created a backing database and client-server
system that uploaded the file(s), requested a part number, and 
built a relation of part_number, URN.

(fwtk and C on client, straight C on server, I would probably do it
different these days, but it works reasonably well).

Then I found the OpenDWG toolkit.  I wrote a pair dwg2ps and dwg2image
that can create a postscript, png, or lossless jpeg of the dwg.
See opendwg.org.

I can share this including source, on a cost-free basis, but opendwg 
is not libre software.

Now, zope is used as glue.  When a request for a file comes in,
I fetch the file from the sever via rsync, convert it on the fly
to the appropriate type, and build a html page that shows a 
thumb-nail, and gives options to print to any of several printers
in several sizes or see various views.  I also time and ISO-9000
stamp the drawing.

I have a separte file-uplaod system that is pure zope.  sending
in email was ocurring for huge files.  I complained enough to
correct erroneous ways.  The system gets a file name, a description,
a notification list, and the file itself.  It stores the file in
a filesystem on the zope server, and notifies the notification list.
Then each time the file is updated or deleted, the notification
list is informed of this.  Users can then click on the URL in the
notification email to get the file.  Also, users can search by
keyword or description to find files and add/ermove themselves
from the notification list.  Only the original uploader can
modify files, no advanced ACL type stuff.

regards

Jim Penny