[PSPS08] Dexterity - a through-the-web, model-driven, friendly content type system

[Martin Aspeli-2]

Hi Wichert,

>> Right, that was my thinking (although Lennart brought up a good point -
>> is it not easier to store it in the ZODB all the time?). Alec just
>> suggested that we do some kind of implicit versioning when we edit the
>> filesystem XML from the TTW GUI, otherwise accidental changes would be
>> non-recoverable.
>>  
>
> I'm not a fan of automatic updates of filesystem things. Automatically
> hooking in a version control system makes things quite complex and
> you'll suddenly need to support 10 different source control systems.
> Then there are different filesystem layouts, Plone sites that do not
> have filesystem write access, etc. I would much prefer to edit only TTW
> and have a 'dump to filesystem' option. That also solves some of the
> undo problems: you can have a simple 'revert to filesystem version'
> button to undo changes.

I didn't really mean "use the existing svn checkout". Alec's suggestion
was that we do some automatic versioning when you save an edited schema,
either by storing a snapshot in the ZODB or use something like Mercurial
- just a way to "undo", basically.

I'm not quite sure what I would prefer to work with, personally. I think
the generic portal_setup UI would be too cumbersome. A "save/update"
button in the TTW GUI may be enough, but it'd be easy for things to get
out of sync. It'd also be annoying to have to do this each time you made
a change as a programmer - forget, and things could get confusing.

>>> Other things I can imagine doing through the web are defining
>>> validators, invariants and dynamic defaults.
>>>    
>>
>> Mmmm.... Maybe. I was thinking more like picking these from pre-defined
>> lists. Having people type Python into a textbox kind of goes against
>> this. I'd rather then that the filesystem developer made such things
>> available for inclusion in the schema.
>>  
>
> Agreed. I think the list of constraints offered by XSD are useful here:
> they are simple things like 'much these upper and lower limits', 'much
> be at most N characters' and 'must satisfy this regexp'. If you need
> anything more complex you should know python and just do this on the
> filesystem. And there is already a well defined serialisation of XSD :)

I don't know a lot about XSD. I googled a bit, but do you know of any
good examples/documentation?

I'd still like to start with 'userschema' from Tres Seaver, since it's
already written and works. It also has an interesting model where you
can write a properly marked up HTML form and turn that into a schema.

Martin

--
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book


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[Lennart Regebro-2]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 3:18 PM, Wichert Akkerman <wichert@...> wrote:
>  Sure, however we need to take into account that we should not end up in a
> situation where we will need two multilingual systems (LP for AT types,
> something else for dexteriy), two linkintegrity systems, two schema
> extension mechanism, etc.

Right.

> Telling people that if they want to extend an AT
> type they need to use solutions A but if they want to extend a dexterity
> type they will need to use solution B.

This I think is inevitable, at least unless we make a major AT
refactoring first, but that is akin to rewriting it from scratch...

> We will be dealing with systems that
> use both AT and non-AT types for a few years so AT support is paramount.

Well, support, yes, but do we have to create all new features so they
also work for old features? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. If
they want all the goodnes of Dexterity, shouldn't they then use
Dexterity?

--
Lennart Regebro: Zope and Plone consulting.
http://www.colliberty.com/
[phone]

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[Andreas Jung-5]

--On 17. Februar 2008 20:04:53 +0100 Lennart Regebro <regebro@...>
wrote:
 We will be dealing with systems that
>> use both AT and non-AT types for a few years so AT support is paramount.
>
> Well, support, yes, but do we have to create all new features so they
> also work for old features? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. If
> they want all the goodnes of Dexterity, shouldn't they then use
> Dexterity?
>
>

Compatibility and especially backward compatibility are very important.
I know that core developers prefer to throwing away old code or ignoring
compatibility issues but compatibility issues are a key factor for products
being accepted and adopted by programmers, integrators and end-users.

Andreas

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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Andreas Jung wrote:

>
> --On 17. Februar 2008 20:04:53 +0100 Lennart Regebro <regebro@...>
> wrote:
>  We will be dealing with systems that
>>> use both AT and non-AT types for a few years so AT support is paramount.
>> Well, support, yes, but do we have to create all new features so they
>> also work for old features? That doesn't seem reasonable to me. If
>> they want all the goodnes of Dexterity, shouldn't they then use
>> Dexterity?
>>
>>
>
> Compatibility and especially backward compatibility are very important.
> I know that core developers prefer to throwing away old code or ignoring
> compatibility issues but compatibility issues are a key factor for products
> being accepted and adopted by programmers, integrators and end-users.

This goes without saying (sniping comment at core developers
notwithstanding). We cannot promote any of this as part of core Plone
until there is a clear and sensible compatibility story.

Martin

--
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book


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[Donna Snow (SnowWrite)-2]

I'd still like to start with 'userschema' from Tres Seaver, since it's
already written and works. It also has an interesting model where you
can write a properly marked up HTML form and turn that into a schema

+1 (anywhere we can put control in the non-developers hand.. safely .. and in a way that is familiar is great! I realize this is just "hashing" out how do to this.. but I like it...I like it... :-))

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[Alexander Limi]

On Sun, 17 Feb 2008 05:14:06 -0800, Martin Aspeli  
<optilude@...> wrote:

> George Lee wrote:
>>
>> (1) How does Drupal do TTW content types, and how similar / different  
>> is it
>> to what Dexterity would be doing?
>
> I'm not best placed to answer this. Matt Bowen might be. :)

The short (and slightly incorrect) answer is: Drupal is reinventing  
ZClasses, about 5-10 years later. ;)

I really thought they were more sophisticated, but they are duplicating  
most of the problems with ZClasses, just in PHP instead. So it might be  
faster, but there's currently no way to do "real development" (ie. file  
system, versioning) this way. At least I couldn't see a clear way to do it.

For some reason, seeing what other systems are up to always makes me  
happy. They are always much less sophisticated and planful than I expect.  
:)

--
Alexander Limi · http://limi.net


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[Alexander Limi]

On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:15:59 -0800, Martin Aspeli  
<optilude@...> wrote:

> Wichert Akkerman wrote:
>> I have one remark on this: that means LinguaPlone will no longer be
>> supported. Unless there is an alternative that means an important use
>> case will no longer be possible.
>
> I thought plone.app.multilingual would supercede LP and be more general,
> but maybe that's stagnated?

I'm having a call with Ramon tomorrow to talk (among other things) about  
the status on this. Will keep you posted.

--
Alexander Limi · http://limi.net


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[Jon Stahl]

Roché Compaan wrote:

> There have been a couple of attempts to do TTW content types with Plone
> in the past, like ATSchemaEditorNG and GenericPloneContent.
>
> These efforts were never encouraged or met with any interest in the
> past. What changed? In fact TTW content types have always been
> discouraged by Plone developers (maybe because ZClasses were such a
> mess). If the answer to my question is "because Martin is the champion
> of this effort" then it is a completely acceptable answer ;-)
>
> For what its worth, I have always believed that there is a "market" for
> TTW content types or at least TTW editing of schemas, simply because
> customers ask for it. I think the popularity and success of PloneFormGen
> proves that users want more power TTW, and when they start using
> PloneFormGen they quickly ask how they can save the form data in Plone
> in a structured way and do more with it.
>
>  

Roché,

You probably have a lot more historical perspective than I do, but my
sense is that Zope started firmly in the "do everything through the web"
world (revolutionary, especially for the time!).  With ZClasses, we hit
the limits of programming through the web, and I think that caused the
pendulum to swing back (hard) the other way to "do everything on the
filesystem, TTW scares us."

I think what's happened is that we've now had enough time to realize
there is a happy medium between these extremes.  Also, as Martin points
out, we now have a whole new bag of Zope 3 programming tricks available
to us, and have realized that building sane TTW schema editing tools
that incorporate the lessons learned from ZClasses and other Zope TTW
editing experiences is now within our grasp.

I also think the core developers (as a whole) now a lot more sensitive
to the needs of "mere mortal" integrators (like me!) than they may have
been in the past.  That's in large part to the maturing of the Plone
community, as well as a fair bit of lobbying, both subtle and overt.  ;-)

One of the things I like best about the Plone community is that we're
not afraid to revist our past assumptions and to learn from both our
mistakes and our successes.

And, having Martin champion things surely doesn't hurt. ;-)

best,
jon



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[Emyr Thomas-2]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 10:02 PM, Alexander Limi <limi@...> wrote:
> On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:15:59 -0800, Martin Aspeli <optilude@...> wrote:
>  > I thought plone.app.multilingual would supercede LP and be more general,
>  > but maybe that's stagnated?
>
>  I'm having a call with Ramon tomorrow to talk (among other things) about
>  the status on this. Will keep you posted.

I would _love_ to help out with plone.app.multilingual wherever I can.
It's something I'm particularly interested in being a Welsh speaker
myself. I'm by no means an experienced coder (although but I have
developed a few packages using some of the more recent component
architecture practices) so it does look a bit daunting but I'm eager
to learn some more by jumping in and helping out on this. Any chance
someone involved could give me a quick run-through on how it all fits
together (docs are currently a bit terse), and suggest where I could
maybe lend a hand?

Thanks,

Emyr

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[Ramon Navarro Bosch-3]

Hi every body !!!

Finally after some months of amazing changes on my live I'm back !

Tomorrow 10am CET I'll meet with some guys that began the  
plone.*.multilingual with me to write the state of the art and write a  
TODO list on this package. I'll be on IRC , so if somebody wants to  
help, you are welcome!

Ramon


El 26/02/2008, a las 14:00, Emyr Thomas escribió:

> On Sun, Feb 17, 2008 at 10:02 PM, Alexander Limi <limi@...>  
> wrote:
>> On Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:15:59 -0800, Martin Aspeli  
>> <optilude@...> wrote:
>>> I thought plone.app.multilingual would supercede LP and be more  
>>> general,
>>> but maybe that's stagnated?
>>
>> I'm having a call with Ramon tomorrow to talk (among other things)  
>> about
>> the status on this. Will keep you posted.
>
> I would _love_ to help out with plone.app.multilingual wherever I can.
> It's something I'm particularly interested in being a Welsh speaker
> myself. I'm by no means an experienced coder (although but I have
> developed a few packages using some of the more recent component
> architecture practices) so it does look a bit daunting but I'm eager
> to learn some more by jumping in and helping out on this. Any chance
> someone involved could give me a quick run-through on how it all fits
> together (docs are currently a bit terse), and suggest where I could
> maybe lend a hand?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Emyr

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[Martin Aspeli-2]

Ramon Navarro Bosch wrote:
> Hi every body !!!
>
> Finally after some months of amazing changes on my live I'm back !

Good to hear - we've missed you. ;-)

Hope all is well with you!

> Tomorrow 10am CET I'll meet with some guys that began the  
> plone.*.multilingual with me to write the state of the art and write a  
> TODO list on this package. I'll be on IRC , so if somebody wants to  
> help, you are welcome!

Yay!

Martin

--
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book


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