[Zope] Composite Objects?

[Jeffrey E. Forcier]

Paul Winkler wrote:

>In that case, I'd write a filesystem Product for the logic.
>Replace the scripts with methods of the Product class.
>Make it folderish so it can contain Forumator forms and anything
>else you want: inherit from Folder and use its UI to manage
>contents.
>
>You could then use AbracadabraObject to clone instances of
>this thing; or you could do it all in code and have a manage_afterAdd 
>method that adds a preconfigured Formulator form.
>Source and/or docs of Formulator should give you a clue how
>to instantiate one with the right config.
>  
>
That's kind of what I was thinking. AbracadabraObject appears to have a 
method call that allows you to use its magic in code, which I think is 
exactly what I want, although as before I'm very surprised that this 
sort of functionality doesn't exist in Zope proper.

I guess my desires aren't actually all *that* in-line with the main body 
of Zope users, as I do *not* want the users of this application to ever 
see a ZMI screen. So I need this half-and-half situation where I or 
another admin can tweak some aspects of a class (e.g. Formulator forms, 
ZPT) via the ZMI or WebDAV, but the instances of those objects are 
instantiated *via code only*, by Python logic and my own (ZPT-driven) 
HTML form interface.

Another possibly far-fetched feature I'd like, which again I believe was 
part of ZClasses, would be to be able to tweak the instances' Formulator 
forms after the fact...e.g. add another data field a year down the road. 
Of course this then means that I both do and don't want these cloned 
forms to match up with the central one, and I'm not at all sure that I 
can accomplish this without writing lots of my own code to handle it.

Thanks for the help, by the way, it's appreciated.

Regards,
Jeff