[Zope3-dev] IMPORTANT RFS: Through the Web Site Development

[Shane Hathaway]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> Shane Hathaway wrote:
> 
>> We should strive to reduce the need for common Zope users to write 
>> software. 
> 
> 
> I'm a bit uncomfortable with notions like "common", "most" and "70-80%".
> 
> There seems to be an actor here that we haven't accounted for at:
> 
>   http://dev.zope.org/Zope3/UserGoalsAndUseCases
> 
> I'm willing to believe that there is a large class of Zope users
> that don't write software other than the equivalent of ASP, JSP, PHP, and
> CGI. The "Software development" section of "Through the Web Site 
> Development"
> wasn't aimed at them. I agree that we should serve these folks.

Agreed.  By "software" I didn't mean to include scripting.  I need a 
better word to replace "software".  Scripting is a simpler activity than 
writing the stuff I'm calling software, and it's oriented toward a 
different actor.  There should be a nice UI for writing scripts.

>> Ever since I started maintaining my own Zope site, I've wanted to do 
>> two simple things.  I'm coming to believe that a lot of new Zope users 
>> want the same things:
>>
>> 1) Add metadata to objects following some schema that I define, and 
>> search based on that metadata.
> 
> 
> Could you expand on this a bit?  So you mean add meta data to individual
> objects, all objects, or "classes" of objects, this creating new content
> types.
> 
> Are you basically talking about creating content types here, or about 
> something
> simpler.

I maintain a growing collection of family photographs.  I'd like to set 
up metadata fields for all of my photographs, such as "date", 
"location", "subjects" (the names of the people in the photo), and 
"processing" (what I did to the photo before posting, such as cropping, 
resizing, adjusting color, etc.).  I don't want Dublin Core metadata. 
Not all image objects on the site are photographs, so I'd like to just 
label which of the image objects are photos.  I'd like to be able to add 
metadata fields later on when I think of them, without writing any software.

I believe Zope 3 is close to addressing this use case, but it needs a 
"metadata" service that allows me to set up metadata schemas.

>> 2) Define what people see if they traverse directly to the object. 
>> Although the default view could be defined by the type of the object, 
>> I think the default view of something is not necessarily dependent on 
>> its type.
> 
> 
> I'm confused here. What does the default view depend on? Are you talking
> about doing this on an object-by-object basis (e.g. folder) or are talking
> about defining content types and saying how to display each content type?

My hathaway.freezope.org site has a little bug I noticed yesterday. 
There are five folders with separate photos, and if you try to directly 
visit any of the photo folders, instead of seeing photos, you'll see the 
listing of all photo folders.  index_html is being acquired.  I can 
imagine a few ways to fix it:

1) Add an index_html to each of the photo folders.  I'd have to remember 
to do this for all new photo folders as well.

2) Change /Photos/index_html to recognize when it has been acquired, and 
show the photos instead of the photo folder listing.  This makes 
/Photos/index_html kind of complicated.

3) Add a "Photo Folder" content type and use it for all photo folders. 
This seems heavy, since photo folders exist only for categorization, not 
to add any functionality to the site.

4) Visit each folder under /Photos and say that its default view is not 
index_html but instead photos_view.  This is the solution that I'd 
prefer, if only because it seems the most obvious.

It could be that explicit acquisition will change my perspective, since 
index_html will not be acquired by default in Zope 3.  So I guess my 
real question is how Zope 3 will choose the default view for a folder, 
and how web developers influence that decision.

Shane