Date: Thu, 01 Jun 2000 18:24:34 -0600
From: ethan mindlace fremen mindlace@digicool.com
To: editors@linuxtoday.com
Subject: The Zope Weekly News
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.
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.