[Zope] Newbiw: How to use Zope for simple CMS sharing docs (word,etc) and

[Andreas Kostyrka]

Am Mit, 2002-08-28 um 20.28 schrieb Niels Petersen:
> Chris, Max, Andreas,
> 
> thanks for your comments. I am still wondering if /hoping Zope is the
> right tool. As I said I am pretty technical but completely new to
> Zope/Phyton and for now I "just" have a urgent need I thought is
> pretty generic:
> 
> * Setup a "portal" where a small team/community can share docs, links
> and maybe discussions.
> * Docs must be categorized (users can add new categories), provide
> upload capability
> * UI must be super-simple (no Zope management stuff) - simply allow
> users these basic features (create new doc, upload, create
> news/links/discussio) and nothing more
> 
> To give you guys an idea of a pretty good solution from the Evil
> Empire - look at MSFT Team Services
> (http://www.microsoft.com/frontpage/sharepoint/fastfacts.htm) or the
> 
> So why do I just not give in and use MSFT ?
> 1) I prefer open source alternatives to the evil empire
> 
> 2) I like what I see in Zope/Plone and _think_ it could fit but I need
> a minimum set of out-of-the-box features I currently don't see (seems
> like zope has too much stuff <- this always happen in tech communities
> - geeky stuff takes overhand)
> 
> 3) Zope is customizable so once I get the hand on it I can see myself
> adding new features that closed MSFT prods do not allow...
> 
> So tell me - are my req's that stange? How much work would it be to
> get Zope/Plone close to the MSFT Team Services?
> 
> Niels
> 
> 
> Re: the ZODB: One pretty important requirement is that members should
> be able to take a snapshot of content from the site for offline work
> (reading while flying or otherwise offline)
Well, reading is easy:
Setup your site, that you can switch on a "readonly" skin by setting
either a cookie or a parameter. (Easier with cookie, because you do not
have to generate urls with "&readonly=1" appended)

Then, to check out the documents:
wget --load-cookies myreadonlycookie.txt --http-user USER --http-passwd
PASSWORD ServerUrl.

Additional benefit: The person checking out is allowed only to fetch
documents he is authorized to check out in real.

If you want to be able to modify the files offline, you've got to solve
two things:
-) Modifying. Either provide a local zope on the laptop, or allow the
user to modify the files on the filesystem.

-) Syncing.
Just do a md5sum on checkout. When syncing, you have these cases:
oldweb | laptop | newweb | explanation
ABC    | ABC    | XYZ    | the online version has been updated.
ABC    | DEF    | ABC    | the offline version has been updated.
ABC    | DEF    | XYZ    | both has been updated. Resolve conflict by human.

> Haveing everything in a file system (that can be mapped) is the
> easiest way..I think. I had mixed emperienced with Zope's WebDAV -
Not really. You might loose some important properties which are not part
of the file. (like keywords, etc.)
Just setup additionally to the online version a service that deals with
checking out (and optionally in) filesystem versions.

This can be centralized like in downloading a .zip file, or it can be a
client program that access the Zope application by xmlrpc, ...

> basically one can mostly not use W2K explorer for copy/paste -
> explorer<->Zope WebDav just don't work well together and I cannot
> change the fact that 99% of team members are on W2K clients..

As noted above by storing the stuff in the filesystem you do not get
really a solution:
-) it ignores permissions. (For a small team this might be ok.)
-) it clutters the filesystem (also the checkout) with more or less
cryptic metainformation.
-) it clutters the filesystem with versioning informations, etc.

Consider something like the following setup:
online zope with a systematic organization (be it real folders, be it
home folders + ZCatalog virtual folders by keyword)
additionally.

An offline copy of your site. (Could be possibly the a clone of the
online one without the data and unnecessary user objects)

And a small python program that installs this local Zope and supports
syncs between these twos.

Getting it right should be less than a week work, but then you might
have problems getting used to Zope.

Andreas