This week's ZWN covers the upcoming Open Source Convention,
the forthcoming Zope 2.2, the PTK's further integration
with the community and Zope.org's new community features and recent
events.
The opinions expressed in Zope Weekly news are solely the author's,
and not the opinions of Digital Creations, The Zope Community
at-large, or the Spanish Inquisition.
The Zope Weekly News now has a "permanent home",
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/ZWN.
And Now For Something Completely Different:
Open Source Convention
Zope is going to have a strong showing at the "Open Source
Convention",
http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon2000/, July 17-20, 2000
This conference should be pretty amazing. Guido
von Rossum is giving a State of Python speech,
Gregory Bendord is giving a futuristic keynote
on the "Comfy Culture", and the Zope community
will be there as well:
o Ryan Huges will be "talking about worldpilot",
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e_sess/725
o Paul Everitt will be talking about
"the Zope-Mozilla Initiative",
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e_sess/853
o Christopher Petrilli will be giving a
tutorial on "Zope for developers",
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/w/python_tutorials.html
based on the materials "taught at IPC8",
http://www.zope.org/Members/petrilli/Presentations/
o In the "It's like Zope just not" department,
Elaine Ashton is holding a Birds of a
Feather to talk about how Zope's success
isn't due to the inherent goodness of
Python, and that "Perlers can do it too",
http://conferences.oreilly.com/oscon2000/bofs/
Documentation Status
-- by Amos Latteier
I'd like to share some what Michel Pelletier and I have been doing to
improve Zope documentation.
* We conducted a poll to help us determine what was most needed. We
found out that Zope docs are of middling quality and folks most want new
user help.
* We wrote an online help system for Zope and wrote help content for
all management screens. Right now we are updating this content for Zope
2.2. The help system will ship with Zope 2.2 and an alpha is available
right now.
* We've started a Zope API documentation process. Right now there is
an extensive Zope API documentation wiki on Zope.org. The fruits of this
labor will be API docs that will ship with Zope in the online help
system. Right now several API docs are complete and are included in the
current 2.2 alpha.
* We've overhauled Zope training materials and will make them
available publicly in the next week or so.
* We're still working on Zope Guides and References replacements. I
think that the training materials will be quite useful for this effort.
I hope to have Guide and Reference replacements done by the end of the
summer.
Zope Status
-- by Brian Lloyd
Summary
o Lots of collector issues were completed for inclusion in 2.2 beta.
o All of the hard thinking for the remaining todo list for beta 1
is basically done. Now its a race to the finish line :^)
Last week highlights
20 collector issues were fixed last week in preparation for 2.2
beta,
mostly issues that pre-date the 2.2 alpha release.
Kudos to this week's MVPs who submitted patches and
helped to diagnose bugs and test fixes:
o Toby Dickenson contributed a patch to speed up Zope
startup.
o Itamar Shtull-Trauring and Chris Withers tracked
down a problem with image caching that affected
certain versions of Netscape browsers.
o Phillip Eby helped uncover a problem with double
aborting of objects registered with the transaction machinery.
o Itamar also sent a patch for Netscape misfeature
that recognizes Windows extended ISO Latin-1
characters as HTML delimiters which would have
slipped by HTML quoting.
o Anthony Baxter and Kevin Dangoor helped track down
a problem with importing in the 2.2 alpha release.
o Shane Hathaway did some much-needed work on the
DateTime module.
Many folks also participated in a discussion of a
proposed Observer interface to support event-based designs
(like email notification) in Zope. There is now a proposed
set of Observer interfaces on the "interfaces Wiki",
http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/Projects/Interfaces
on Zope.org (and there was much rejoicing).
Next week
Finish up outstanding issues and get a 2.2.0 beta 1 release out.
The outstanding issues to finish before the beta are:
o Changing how ownership is handled for move / rename
operations. Ownership info will not change for move
or rename operations, and a new knob will likely be
added to the "import" screen so you can choose to
import objects with their existing ownership
information intact. The online help for ownership
will be updated accordingly.
o Some basic hooks to support virtual hosting (a la
SiteAccess) have been designed and will be added
to allow product authors to write virtual hosting
support without fragile dependencies on parts of
the Zope core.
o Finish changes to the undo machinery that will
expose a more appropriate subset of undo-able
transactions to the user. The set exposed now
was fine at one time, but as the line between
"site management" and "site user" continues to
blur, a more restricted subset will make undo
easier to delegate to a broader range of users.
o Get the minimal Observable default implemention
checked in to the Zope core. Note that for 2.2
at least, the only impact of this will be that
ZClasses will be able to subclass the default
Observable implementation. While we suspect that
many builtin Zope objects could benefit from being
Observable in the longer run, we want to let the
interface and default implementation shake out in
application usage before taking that step.
o Some misc. catalog bugs need to be closed.
This week in the PTK Community
-- by Tres Seaver
* There's one new bug, one closed bug, and 16 outstanding
bugs in the "Portal Toolkit Tracker",
http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/Tracker.
There are also 14 current feature requests.
* "Front door revamped", http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/
to give better access to PTK resources.
* As an initial step toward DigitalCreations' goal
of opening up Zope development to the community, we
have invited the following members of the PTK
community to jump through the hoops needed to
establish them as CVS and Tracker contributors:
- Chris Withers
- Steve Alexander
- Bill Anderson
- Chip Vanek
- Kevin Dangoor
- Dan Pierson
* Steve Alexander "performed the first community checkin",
http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/2000-May/000885.html
to the PTK CVS repository:
*...and the crowd goes wild!*
* Steve also "fixed the recent breakage",
http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/2000-May/000896.html
introduced by tightening security on ZCatalog
* Dan Pierson has code ready to check in to integrate
the PTK with the new LoginManager;
he is "awaiting comment",
http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-ptk/2000-May/000871.html
by the community
Looking Ahead
* Tres Seaver is drafting a vision document for the
"next-generation",
http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/ZWiki/OnceAndFuturePTK
of the PTK:
* Chip Vanek has done some work on a new "skin" for
the PTK. Watch for him to "post it",
http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/ZWiki/ContributedPTKProducts
* Landing Dan's LoginManager patch.
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This week in the Zope Web
-- by Ethan Fremen
* The Zope Web fell off the map over Memorial Day weekend,
as all the magic smoke got out of the Network Interface
Card in the primary nameserver. The problem was rectified,
but the mailing lists suffered indegestion for some time
afterwards.
* There was an IRC chat with Jim and Paul about Perl Methods.
Can Camels have Zen? Check "the summary",
http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Chats/ChatTopics/
to find this and other exciting answers.
* There is a "Tracker for zope.org", http://www.zope.org/Tracker!
Please submit your bugs and feature requests here.
Don't forget to check to see if someone has already submitted your
request.
* There is a "mailing list for zope.org",
http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-web.
Join if you want to be involved in making zope.org ever more
elucidating.
Bugs/features addressed
24 open bugs and feature requests lie within the tracker currently:
4 bugs have been resolved and 2 accepted.
* "Mountable Filesystem has been added",
http://www.zope.org/Tracker/2
so that Wikis stay unpacked to track their history.
* Loging in and out now takes you "back where you came from",
http://www.zope.org/Tracker/6
* Clicking on Spotlight "takes you to the old spotlights",
http://www.zope.org/Tracker/7
* All zope-related mailing lists "are now listed",
http://www.zope.org/Resources/MailingLists.
Thanks to rungaya for submitting "this request",
http://www.zope.org/Tracker/25
* Products can now be sorted according to Author, Date
and Title: The request of many, including Evan Gibson,
rungaya, and mindlace :)
More "product sorting features",
http://www.zope.org/Tracker/18
have been requested.
Zope Mail
There was a net gain of 78 subscriptions to all the
mailing lists @zope.org in the week ending May 21.
* zope lost 48 subscribers, but still managed
to eke out 8 more than we started the week with.
* zope-announce managed to net 13 new subscribers,
hopefully encouraging some people to actually
post announcements there :)
* zope-dev proved academically challenging, losing
a net two subscribers in the last week, bringing
the brain drain over the last two weeks to 5.
* zope-ptk netted four subscribers. I expect this
newsgroup to be one to follow in the coming months.
* zope-mozilla held more or less even, with one net
subscriber.
* zdp picked up a net five members, continuing growth
that has been maintained since a mid-December lull.
* zope-packagers stayed even, zope-checkins lost one,
and digicool-cvs stayed even, more evidence that
Zope needs to help people to use The Source.
Next Week:
* Making the Members page do something is an issue
that's been floating around for at "least two months",
http://zope.nipltd.com/public/lists/zope-archive.nsf/ByKey/C7FB63A7488F21D7.
Work will be put in, and progress will be made.
Follow the fireworks in "the tracker",
http://www.zope.org/Tracker/16
and see Digital Creation's jam session on the broader
topic of "ReallyBigFolders",
http://www.zope.org/Wikis/zope-dev/ReallyBigFolders
* Alexandre's "printer-friendly list",
http://zope.nipltd.com/public/lists/zope-archive.nsf/ByKey/2DA8694265457909
should find it's way onto the how-to page.
Future Plans:
* Chris Withers jumped on the idea that we could use
zope.net and zope.com, and fired up a "wiki about it",
http://www.zope.org/Members/chrisw/ZopeSites/FrontPage
* Members of the community actively interested in zope.org
need to be part of making it, in similar fashion to
the way people are getting access to the PTK & zope CVS.
