[Zope] Suggestions for an approach - document library

David Ornstein davido@nuvomedia.com
Mon, 5 Jun 2000 16:21:22 -0700


Hi All,

I'm trying to put in place the infrastructure to manage a trade organization
that does a lot of standards work for the eBook world
(http://www.openebook.org/).  At the moment, the site is all static.  We now
have a handful of working groups with subgroups, etc.  I'm trying to pick
the right technology to build a much fancier site with lots of groupware
stuff.  Zope looks pretty good..

I'm looking for suggestions for how to tackle one of the pieces I think I
need.  I don't know Python (yet), but do know a dozen other OO languages and
web stuff pretty much inside out...

I've created a WorkingGroup ZClass.  I'm going to create WorkingGroups for
each of the workign groups in the "real world."  I want to give them the
ability to have a library of documents that are meaningful for their work.
I want to capture certain metadata about each Document (author, etc.).  I
want the documents to be URL-addressable and to be protectable using the
standard Zope security system.  I imagine that the DTHL for the index view
of  WorkingGroup will have, among other things, a list of documents in the
document library (for that WorkignGroup) with the ability to
add/remove/update/etc...

While many of the folks on the working groups will be web-savvy, this whole
thing should behave as an application for them.  I don't believe I want to
expose them to the Zope Management interface.

I'm trying to figure out which direction to head.  Would you build a new
ZClass called DocumentLibrary and another called Document (maybe subclass
from File somehow?)?  How would you generate the table view of all the
documents in a DocumentLibrary (DTML in the index view of the
DocumentLibrary)?  How would you deal with next/prev if the list's too long?

I'm willing to do the work, but I'd rather have a sense that I'm pursuing
this in a way that embodies some ZopeSense.

Suggestions?

Thanks much,
David

___________________________________________________________
David Ornstein, CTO, NuvoMedia, Inc.

AIM: dbo666 voice: 650-314-1200 web: http://www.nuvomedia.com/
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"An honest man is able to speak for himself, when a knave is not."
Shakespeare, King Henry VI., Part 2