[Zope] Re. Policy -- Docs link to source

Jerry jerry@spicklemire.com
Sat, 12 Feb 2000 22:52:52


The notion of using links in documents to point back to Zope source (and
possibly vice versa?) may seem obvious, especially with respect to a Web
Centric project like Zope, but it presents a bit of a puzzle. On one hand,
Zope brings us a new level of dynamic hypertext, with lot's of wonderful
extensions, such as the Catalog, to aid searching, etc. On the other hand
the urge to deploy this very technology for the purpose of enhancing the
"acquisition" (?!) of Zen smacks us right up against the immaturity of the
Web itself. 

How can the links possibly be kept "fresh", especially with a rate of
development as rapid as Zope's? Is "freshness" the sole criteria? What of
the historical value of archival code, and documentation? Temporal data
integrity may not seem mission critical in this particular instance (Zope
as software project), but there are plenty of applications where such
criteria are vital.

Bobo gave us persistence, Zope gives us integration. Are we ready to tackle
the nitty gritty of managing non-tabular data, randomly shifting in four
dimensions?

Now appears a glimpse of the depths that Ted Nelson addressed in the Xanadu
project. It may be time to review the sort of solutions that Xanadu
actually applied to tracking documents changing over time. Does anyone have
a complete collection of "Byte" from the 80's? There was an excellent
article about Xanadu, and a fair exposition of the algorithm.

This is getting very interesting!