[Zope-CMF] List of subject/metadata sets? - Composite Docs

[seb bacon]

* Jon Edwards <jon@pcgs.freeserve.co.uk> [010606 13:45]:
> That's true, but I'm thinking of it more from a workflow/versioning
> perspective.
> 
> If you had a fourth state, it gives you more options when defining your
> workflow. For example, you could say that documents that had been "approved"
> could still be edited by Editors, but not by their owner anymore. (Trying
> hard to think of a better example!) Once they have been "published" in a
> composite doc, they could only be edited by creating a new version, leaving
> the original intact.

> Different applications would have different rules, but having that fourth
> state (if you're using composite docs) gives you flexibility to define
> exactly the workflow rules you need?

I think your example is a good one; however, my feeling is that
workflows will probably vary so much between applications that it's
unlikely that there will ever be a one size fits all workflow.  But
with Shane's new WorkflowTool, that shouldn't be too much of a
problem.  

I'm fairly new to this whole workflow thing, but my main observation
would be that getting the requirements right is by far the biggest
chunk of work in creating a workflow.  We spent about 4 hours
discussing a single workflow with 4 states the other day, and I reckon
3.5 hours of that was generated by the introduction of a fourth state.
My rule of thumb is that brainmush and disagreement potential
increase exponentially in proportion to number of workflow states.

> I guess somewhere in the composite docs scheme, there's going to be a "list"
> of which components are published in which composite docs (or a way of
> querying the catalog to find that info). So I guess you could do a look-up
> to see if a particular component has been used anywhere, as and when you
> need to. But this might be less efficient?

Than what? I've lost you there :-)

cheers,

seb