[Zope] Developing customer customizable products

[J. Cameron Cooper]

Lennart Regebro wrote:

>From: "Petter Holmström" <petter.holmstrom at abo.fi>
>  
>
>>Let's say I write a guestbook product. This product has a default user
>>interface which means that I can, if I wish, just add a guestbook
>>product to the customer's folder and that's it. Unfortunately we're
>>seldom that lycky. Perhaps the customer wants the guestbook in another
>>language, or "embedded" into his/her original website. To do this I'll
>>have to override the default presentation pages somehow.
>>The management screens can stay as they were.
>>What is the best approach?
>>    
>>
>
>Well, step one is to make sure that all the logic is the part of the product
>python classes, and that no logic is in the DTML. A godo way of doing this
>is using ZPT where putting anything else than display logic in the templates
>automatically becomes painful. :-)
>
>Step two is to make sure you have a good flexible API to call the logic.
>
>After that, step three is to make the display methods (DTML or ZPT). The
>customer adaptation is then just a question of making new templates.
>
>Step four is optional, and that is to make parts reusable, but still
>replaceable. This is hard to do in pure Zope, and requires some sort of
>"templating system". CMF's portal_skins is one.
>  
>
The CMF skin system (Filesystem Directory View) is available outside CMF 
in the FileSystemSite product. That seems like the right way to do 
skinning to me.

          --jcc

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