[Zope-CMF] Some questions regarding 'portal_actions'

[Jean Jordaan]

Hi Yuppie

> portal_actions is 'Action Provider' *and* 'Actions Tool'. The 'Actions' 
> tab belongs to its role as 'Action Provider'. There is no tab in the ZMI 
> that shows all Actions of all 'Action Providers'.

Ah, OK, I understand. So the Actions tool provides all the actions
that aren't provided by one of the other providers. In practice, it
seems like it provides navigation-related actions (list folder contents,
go to Welcome/News/Search page), but also a Workflow action, and
Cut/Copy/Paste/Delete actions. It seems to me that there are tools
where these actions fit better than mixed together on the
'portal_actions' tool, eg. 'portal_navigation' and 'portal_workflow'.

> Each 'Action Provider' has at least one 'Actions' tab to configure the 
> Actions it provides. 

'portal_workflow' is listed as an action provider, and it has no
Actions tab.

> The 'Actions' tab of a specific type configures actions specific to 
 > this type.

But they aren't listed as action providers. It looks like types are
implicitly picked up as action providers, although this is not
apparent from the ZMI.

>> Why is 'portal_types' mentioned here:
>>
>>  .../portal_actions/manage_overview
>>
>> ("These actions are drawn from several sources: [...]
>>     * the types tool, for actions which are specific to a given
>>       content type."
>> ) while is does not feature here:
>>
>>  .../portal_actions/manage_actionProviders
> 
> The 'Actions Tool' has an 'Action Providers' tab to configure the 
> optional used 'Action Providers'.

Yes, exactly. I'm saying that the information on this tab is
inconsistent with the text of the Overview.

> There could be a note that types_tool is not an optional 'Action 
> Provider' and there for is not mentioned on the 'Action Providers' tab.

Then why is it mentioned on .../portal_actions/manage_overview
and why does it have an Actions tab?

>> Should I file a Collector issue on this?
> 
> Don't know. There are more important things to fix.

Well, if this is regarded as unimportant, it's only more likely that
it will be forgotten :/

Actually, I think it's quite related to the (sorely needed) tidying
work that you're doing, regarding the structure of the CMF modules
as a whole. You're reorganizing the source code, and I'm proposing
that the UI and configuration also get some attention.

-- 
Jean Jordaan
http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za