[Zope] "Document" assembly with Zope

complaw@hal-pc.org complaw@hal-pc.org
Fri, 22 Jun 2001 16:45:56 GMT


Has anyone brought up the subject of "document assembly" where, for example, a
folder contains a series of DTML documents with, for example, a text property
that contains html code (or RTF code).  Moreover, there would be a heirarchy of
folders with similar DTML documents that, upon invoking a Python script, would
take (sequentially and recursively) all of the text properties of all of the
DTML documents and then create one huge HTML (or whatever) file that is returned
to the user?

The folders would be akin to chapters in a book and the DTML documents would be
like sections within a chapter.

I know that Zope has the ability to help navigate through something like this
(dtml-tree).  Hoewever, I don't know how to write a Python script that could
recursively go through a set of folders (from some base folder) and do the
necessary pre- and post-processing (led alone return that to the user).

Incidentally, this would greatly facilitate a collaborative creation of a
document via the web (using FTP and WebDAV).  Something akin to a CVS for
documents.  Even better, because once the document is finished, you can change
the permissions so that it "freezes" the text.  A new base folder can be used
for later "versions" of the text and logic in the base folder (that contains the
various version) could be used to find differences between the two versions.

Has anyone seen something like that for Zope or know where to begin?

Cheers,

Ron