[Zope3-dev] Axe DTML Document

[Martijn Faassen]

Casey Duncan wrote:
> There have been good points raised here by all. I think I will draft a 
> Fishbowl proposal on this sometime soon. Here is my take on what a "Document" 
> object would be:
> 
>   - The data/content would be textual and static. I doubt you could create a 
> single XML format to efficiently and effectively handle all cases, so likely 
> it would need to support whatever textual format you desired.
> 
>   - It would have the capability to add metadata/properties. Would the 
> ability to specify a common/default schema (dublin core?) be beneficial?
> 
>   - It would have History/diff capabilities perhaps like what DTML objects 
> have now, maybe better.
> 
>   - Supporting adapters would be created to do things such as HTML 
> decapitation, format conversion (STX -> HTML, HTML -> Raw Text, LaTEX -> 
> DocBook, whatever), metadata extraction, etc.
> 
>   - It would have some form of catalog or index awareness.

Ability to place different types of editors on top of the content
information is important to me. Again that could be done with 
adaptors, like you'd do with format conversion/presentation.

>   - It would be available for 3 easy payments of $19.95 (No CODs, please)!
> 
> The document object itself will probably be dead simple and likely dumb as a 
> stump. Not much there beyond a file object. Actually, what IS the difference 
> between a document and a file, once you have ComponentArchitecture to 
> componentize the behavior?

Well, my document content is usually a bit more structured than just
flat binary data; I use XML a lot. ParsedXML, for all its failings,
is my content object. Of course I can't use that in raw form,
so I have several components constructed or under construction that
can work with it:

   * different schemes for linking into a document to an XML node (NodePath)
     Can be used for annotation style stuff as well.

   * XPathMethods for searching nodes (still need to create catalog
     integration to cache search results)

   * various ways to render it, from using simple DTML or ZPT and
     the DOM to using XMLWidgets. XSLT is also a possibility.
     Also a scheme to output to PDF
 
   * an authoring framework (built on top of XMLWidgets; may need
     different specific authoring tools for different XML schemas).

Overall I agree with your suggestions though; I'm all for componentizing
this. I just wanted to give some examples of what I do with document-style
content.

I disagree however that the content needs to be textual and static; 
I prefer treeish and manipulatable. :)

Regards,

Martijn