[Zope-CMF] Returning XML documents from CMF

Jon Edwards jon@pcgs.freeserve.co.uk
Wed, 18 Jul 2001 17:04:02 +0100


Hi Marc,

I'm afraid I don't have deep enough Zen to tell you why it works, but I'm
glad it did! :-)

I'm just starting to look at the possibilities of using XML with CMF, and
I'd like to fire a few questions/ideas at the group, if I may?

1. On the Proposed Enhancements page -
http://cmf.zope.org/rqmts/proposals/ - there's one that's titled "Apply
ParsedXML to Build Content Objects from XML", but it leads to an empty page?
Is this a dogbowl-bug, or just a document waiting to be written?

2. Perhaps there could be a library of pre-defined XML-content-types, based
on popular formats/DTDs (docbook, for example)? Each would have a CMF or XML
output method, and an import method - great for interchanging content with
other systems.

3. Total fantasy - what if there was a method/wizard for creating CMF
content-types by processing a DTD?

4. Thinking about the CMS/layouts/templates thread - has anyone played with
using XSLT for this? There are some examples for general Zope -

Software Product: XSLTemplate
http://www.zope.org/Members/karl/XSLTemplate/XSLTemplate

HiawathaZ Zope Plugin - includes "XSLT Bean"
http://www.pault.com/pault/prod/Hiawatha/HiawathaZ.html

Software Product: nXMLDocument
http://www.zope.org/Members/philh/nXMLDocument

- but has anyone considered it with CMF?

Downside : another technology to learn (but it would be optional, not
compulsory), possible performance-hit?

Upside : lots of tools/editors available (some open-source?) which might
allow you to hide the complexity from end-users?, interop with other
apps/systems, maximum buzzword-compliancy! ;-)

Cheers, Jon