[Zope] Developing customer customizable products

[kapil thangavelu]

On 12/5/03 11:27 AM, "J. Cameron Cooper" <jccooper at jcameroncooper.com>
wrote:

> 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.

I haven't integrated the full cmf skinning mechanism in filesystemsite as it
entails architecture/instance space requirements for sites. currently
filesystemsite is based purely based on fs directory views for managing site
code/presentation on the fs.

-kapil