[Zope] Feature requests and questions

[Ken Manheimer]

On Tuesday, April 13, 1999 4:50 PM Christopher Petrilli wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 13, 1999 at 01:45:02PM -0700, Andrew Wooldridge wrote:

> > [...]
> > 7) implement a mailing list from within Zope
> 
> Woah, different thing entirely.  Check out Mailman (www.list.org), and
> there's some talk about implementing a sort of integration between the
> two, but that should be taken to them, not to the Zope people.

Actually, it so happens one of the primary mailman implementers is here
at digicool.  I've played a tiny bit with substituting some zope-based
dtml for mailman's homegrown web interface it's a tantalyzing temptation
to just go ahead and do the whole thing.  That, however, wouldn't add a
whole lot of value (it would just simplify the interface code, at the
expense of a whole nother system  on which mailman depends), and we'd
like to think through what we'd really want to accomplish with such an
effort.

We're working on the foundation for a notion of membership in our linux
expo project, and there's one thing that would be a compelling case for
superficial integration.  Then there's the persistent object store and
other facilities for doing a nice persistent server, which would make my
mouth water if i were a particularly obsessive compulsive personality.
(No, my mouth is not actually watering.)  Plus, having a two-way
interface with email in zope is a really interesting prospect, adding
value to zope as well as to systems that use it.  There are some really
interesting opportunities here - email systems like, but less monolithic
than, conventional mailling lists, where for instance email-based
"discussions" can be embedded in documents, and spawn off new resources
as threads spin off.  Or whatever - more thinking needs be done.

So there's a lot of nice stuff to do here.  When we'll pinpoint what,
that would have priority, is a question.  There's *lotsa* nice stuff to
do with zope...

> >     c)workflow
> 
> 27 ton weight. But not impossible, but I'm not sure it belongs IN
Zope,
> honestly.

I would not dismiss this too quickly.  We went into the dreamworld for a
day or two, thinking about what could be if we had a versatile workflow
engine in zope, and i think a lot of mouths were watering.  Imagine if
you had a bunch of interfaces and could express your activity logic for
expressing the flow between them in a high-level, comprehensible way.
That might be a reeeal convenient way to build applicable portions of a
web site.  This is probably something we'll return to after linux expo.

Ken Manheimer
klm@digicool.com