[Zope] NeoBoard - Stupid Newbie Questions

[Philip Kilner]

Hi Wankyu,

In article <FNEHJADNNBCCKKLPDFMPEEIGCAAA.wankyu@neoqst.com>, Wankyu Choi wrote:
> >BTW, does NeoBard need a MailHost - or does it have it's own SMTP 
> >functionality? It hasn't asked me for a server, and I can't see how it 
> >could know /which/ MailHost to use...
> 
> For all practicall reasons, I couldn't think of a situation where you'll
> access a remote SMTP server for mail services.
> 

I'm lucky - I have control of the server, so I can create what NeoBoard expects. 

Just as an opinion though, I'd suggest that since MailHosts are Zope's standard 
way of doing things, that this would be the best mechanism to use - as you say 
elsewhere, with Zope you do not need to "re-invent the wheel...". This would be 
both more intuitive to a Zope developer and provide a single point of management.

> So, NeoBoard comes with its own Mailer class which defaults to localhost, port 25. 
> You don't need a Mailhost. Works only on a Unix platform, though.
> 

I guess that's my problem - I'm on NT 4.0....(e.g. Win32)

> And my bad, up to 0.9.1, NeoBoard lacks the sendmail() method. Its parent project 
> NeoPortal defines that method far up the hierarchy and I forgot to re-define it 
> in the public version of NeoBoard.
> 

Understood.

> NeoPortal gets its SMTP host/port number from a getMailHost() method defaulting to 
> localhost/25 in their absence. I'll re-implement it in the next version of NeoBoard 
> to give options to users: Zope Mailhost or default localhost/25.
> 

That sounds like the ideal solution - a choice!

> Download version 0.9.2 in the meantime, a quick patch for that missing sendmail() 
> method.
> 

I'll take a look at that - thanks.

> >However, there are a few things that I /would/ like to be able to "get 
> >at", other than the raw message objects (I'd like to think I could work 
> >with these programmatically if not interactively, BTW). The most 
> >important is the document which "holds the board" - ideally, if this 
> >document were a DTML Method (Like Squishdot, which I have some 
> >experience with), I could then call this from my existing (DTML) page 
> >design...
> 
> Well, that issue I already discussed with another user on one of the boards I run at
> neoboard.net.
> 

Hmm...I couldn't find any existing discussions along these lines - could you pride a 
pointer to this thread, please?

> NeoBoard's DTML's reside in the folder 'dtml' and can't be edited thru ZMI. I just 
> didn't want an innocent user to break the product by directly editing DTML's.
> 

I guess this is a dilemma common to any product - but really this level of control is 
needed to integrate the product into a site...

> But, guess you guys really want to get at the DTML's. I'll give you options on this 
> one two in the next version.
> 

..so thanks!

> Thanx for the feedback.
> 

You are very welcome. I should emphasise that, as I said before, I am not a hard core 
coder - I integrate Zope products, and hack them where I need to, but my contributions are
generally limited to documentation and HowTo stuff. IN this case, when I've got more 
comfortable with the product and assimilated the mods you have discussed, I'll do an 
outline document for this, if this is not duplicating anyone else's efforts.

> It's not recommended, but if you really need it, you can access a message object, 
> say, "a_1" with the following URL assuming it's in a 'Test' board.
> 
> http://yourhost/Test/a_1/manage
> 
> That'll give you ZMI on that message object.
> 
> But messing with message objects/external file objects directly might break the 
> threading mechanism. 
> 

Understood - I don't necessarily want to change it, just to understand it...

> Zope had all I needed to make this product work. Everything was already there. 
> I only brought ideas from NeoBoard PHP version, not a single line of code. Isn't 
> that a miracle? Only Zope could have made it happen. For example, making threads 
> work gives you a real headache when working in Perl or PHP. But, ZPublisher already 
> gave me the solution before even I thought about the problem.
> 
> I've never been happier coding anything:-)
> 

Me neither - the minimum amount of abstraction between the idea and the implementation,
the maximum amount of re-use of code and other effort...

Regards and Thanks,

PhilK