[Zope] The Zope Weekly News

ethan mindlace fremen mindlace@digicool.com
Thu, 01 Jun 2000 18:18:25 -0600


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.