[Zope-CMF] Moderated Discussion

Alan Runyan runyaga@runyaga.com
Fri, 15 Feb 2002 17:02:06 -0600


> Plone is ZPT-based, and uses CSS extensively, and Blark just clobbers the
> layout and style. Perhaps it's less a DTML vs. ZPT issue, and simply a
> product of how much of the look-and-feel for it's section of the site
Blark
> simply takes over.

yes.  the zope-skins mailing list (which was never announced) and has kinda
lulled was going to attempt to address this question: how we all can share
interface space.  for instance if we all conformed to a very high level
CSS/Interface design we could plug bits in w/o stepping on each other.

> Right now, Plone provides the basic look-and-feel for more or less the
> entire site. It may go away, though, as I become more comfortable with
skin
> setup myself. Using ZPT is more or less a hard requirement, though, as the
> site's look-and-feel need to be maintainable via standard design tools
like
> Dreamweaver without me or another programmer having to "port" every piece
> of updated HTML to DTML.

I think I have a DTML version of Plone around here.  its really old and
crusty.  i think for Plone ZPT is the best choice.  if you look at the forms
they are very well designed and are easy to digest.

> As far as reuse of existing discussion tools goes, I'm certainly open to
> options. I'd rather not introduce a RDBMS dependency, (as Squib does) but
> it might be a usable stopgap.

I looked at the source a little.  its pretty nasty ;) its got loads of
features incorporated into it.  I would really like to work on this.  maybe
we should take a cut at a API first?  for something that will scale in high
write environments I would suggest moving to a RDBMS.  I believe its
possible in ZODB land.. just not very fun.

It would really be nice so all in CMF land could register with a tool and
allow users to pick boxes (I think PostNuke calls them BLOCKS) they want to
display.  Ultimately we really want CMFCalendar, Blog, Voting, Discussion
Forums, RSS feeds, anything else in CMF to be able to participate easily
with each other.

Plone Update:
I've just incorporated Formulator into Plone.  It seems like it will work.
I have a portal_forms tool that is responsible for creating Forms and has a
method validate(form).  works just fine so far.  If people are interested in
testing, please contact me.

~runyaga