Zope Weekly News for November 17, 1999

Date: Wed, 17 Nov 1999 18:21:36 -0500
From: “Mike Pelletier” <<a
href=”mailto:mike@digicool.com”>mike@digicool.com>
To: editors@linuxtoday.com

G’day,

Zope Weekly News is a digest of some of the useful and
interesting events which have occurred on the various Zope mailing
lists and the Zope.org site. It is published each Wednesday
evening.

New Products and Announcements

* Paul Everitt announces Sybase support in a joint press
release.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013946.html

http://www.digicool.com/News/Sybase

* “Zen” released ZRadius, a product which allows you to
authenticate web users via the Radius authentication protocol.

http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/ZRadius

* Anthony Pfrunder announces VisualZope 0.1a. From his web
page:

Basically, the “goal” of VZ is to provide a SIMPLE visual
editing system for graphic designers which works cross-browser and
takes advantage of the acquisition and role systems within Zope.
What follows is a brief description of the components which make up
the final VZ system (probably more accurate than previous
posts).

http://163.182.196.200/zwiki/VisualZope

* Jeff Sheldon has started a weblog of his experiences with
Zope. Jeff Sheldon is new to Zope, and is not a professional
programmer. His weblog is a valuable resource to those also
starting out with Zope.

http://weblogs.userland.com/zopeNewbies/stories/storyReader$0

Updates

* Zope 2.1.0 beta 2 has been released. This release includes
fixes for issues found in beta 1, an updated load_site.py script
and Martijn Pieters’ patches to implement try/except/else and
try/finally in DTML. Unless something major comes up, this will be
the final beta before 2.1.0 final.

http://www.zope.org/Products/Zope/2.1.0b2/

* “4am” has submitted an update to his PythonMethod product. It
allows methods, written in Python, to be created via the Zope web
management interface.

http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/PythonMethod

* “Drew” contributed an update to his Photo product. It
generates thumbnail views of images at the user’s preferred size.
Requires PIL.

http://www.zope.org/Members/Drew/Photo

* Itamar Shtull-Trauring announced ZCache v0.2. ZCache is a
Python Product which allows you to cache expensive methods, taking
strain off your server. It also generates ‘Last-Modified’ headers,
aiding browser and proxy caches.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014115.html

http://www.zope.org/Members/itamar/ZCache

Zope.org items

* “Zen” submitted a tip he picked up from Michel Pelletier. He
explains how volatile attributes work, and how to populate them
when your object is loaded from the database. Volatile attributes
are attributes which do not get written to the database, and are
good for data which changes frequently.

http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/tips/VolatileAttributes

* “AlexR” submitted a How-To detailing the use of the DTML
entity syntax. “DTML entities” are chunks of DTML which look like
this: “&dtml-title_or_id;”

http://www.zope.org/Members/AlexR/EntitySyntax

Notable Discussions

* DTML is a HUGE topic this week. Discussions spill across
several lists. A very good job is done of identifying DTML’s weak
points.

Many hold that the difficulty in using DTML comes from it’s
roots as a reporting language– it isn’t supposed to be used for
logic. The problem is, there isn’t yet an easy replacement for DTML
as a programming language. Python Methods are cited as an excellent
start on providing a means of moving logic out of DTML. Christopher
Petrilli mentions that DC is looking at grooming Python Methods for
inclusion in Zope.

Others feel that reporting vs. programming is a forced
distinction, and that it is awkward to have to use two different
solutions. The claim that generating HTML is actually a rather
complex task, and the powerful but ugly features of DTML are a
necessary evil.

DTML is compared to Perl! Otherwise, lots of very useful tips
for using DTML are revealed. An excellent read for DTML beginners
and wizards alike.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013710.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/1999-November/002088.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/1999-November/002102.html

* Darcy Clark alerts the list of Jon Udell’s latest article
mentioning Zope. Jon’s article discusses the ease of using Zope
with Windows databases, the pain of using it with Unix databases,
cheers ODBC, and jeers lack of a similar magic bullet for Unix. The
thread then continues to discuss the relative merits of various
free databases and using them with Zope.

http://www.byte.com/column/BYT19991104S0001

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013711.html

Also, Karl Fast does an excellent job of summarising the thread,
generating more sage comments.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013762.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013812.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013813.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013840.html

* Francois-Regis CHALAOUX posed a question about using Zope with
virtual hosting. Several useful responses were generated.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013678.html

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013688.html

* Ben Galbraith submitted a comparison of Zope and Cold Fusion
and solicited comments. Some of the usual suspects offer
theirs.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013730.html

* Otto Hammersmith started a thread about Zope and security. In
it, he speaks of some of the security pitfalls that unsuspecting
Zope users could experience. Brian Lloyd submits some
solutions.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013779.html

* Paul Everitt wrote in to remind us that there is a
zope-dev@zope.org list for technical discussions. A brisk
discussion developed to debate what constituted a technical
discussion.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013796.html

* Theodore Patrick launched a lengthy thread with questions
about the effect of threading in Zope. A number of folks from
Digital Creations provide answers. The discussion moves on with
high volume and content to the topics of benchmarking and
performance tuning Zope.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/013808.html

* Farzad Farid revives the uncacheable image thread. Because
Acquisition can lead to different URLs being generated for images
when viewed from different locations, it makes caching difficult
and can generate excessive traffic. Others offer advice to solve
this problem.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/1999-November/014021.html

* David Harrison asks zope-dev how to return an image generated
on-the-fly by an External Method. Answers found.

http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope-dev/1999-November/002107.html

Mike Pelletier