[Zope-PTK] content states

[Steve Alexander]

"Phillip J. Eby" wrote:
> 
> I realize I'm coming into this a little late, but I needed to do some
> thinking about this concept and how it fits with ZPatterns and SWARM.
> Anyway, here were my thoughts on the concept and interface...
> 
> First, I would like to suggest calling these things "flags" or "steps"
> instead of "states", as they actually designate the status of steps within
> a workflow, rather than the overall state of the workflow.

I'm happy with either naming. With calling them "states" I had a picture
in my mind of a particular kind of state-transition diagram where you
can simplify things by having two state-spaces in parallel. I'll try and
dig out a reference if anyone's interested.

However, I also like your suggestion of "flags" as it is more familiar
to most programmers, and is more easily understood by non-specialists.

I suggest we go with "Flags".

> Anyway...  perhaps you could define a standard property sheet name
> ("review_checklist", perhaps?) for the content states, and then have the
> keyword method simply generate one state flag per property in that property
> sheet.  Portal authors could then redefine the sheet to suit their portal's
> workflow, while still taking advantage of the keyword cataloging that you
> were implementing this to drive.  And, to top it all off, you get the
> benefit of only having to set the permissions on the propertysheet in order
> to drive all of the security behavior...

I really like this. It lets the states aspects work standing alone from
ZPatterns, but also allows us easily to plug in ZPatterns later.

If there are any objections to doing things this way, post them off
quickly! :-)

Otherwise, I'll get cracking on this and post the results as soon as I
can.

--
Steve Alexander
Software Engineer
Cat-Box limited
http://www.cat-box.net