[Zope3-dev] 'Folders', 'Sites' and customising Y's

[Chris Withers]

Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
<snip "what's an X? what's a Y?">

How about just calling everything a folder and adding modifiers to that.

Y : Plugin Folder
X : Software Folder or Workspace Folder (I'm neutral as to which one is better)

...and Content Folder for fodlers which store real content.

Something to throw into the mix, though. When we have a "web site", with this 
just be a "type of folder" or will it be something that contains all of the 
above? I'm hoping for the latter, as it'll let you really have more than one 
independent site per Zope instance (different plugins and the like) but that 
does raise the question of how you go about nesting sites.

> Some additional notes about software development and distribution.
> 
> As mentioned earlier, people will create Xs to hold software developed
> locally to customize the local site. At some point, someone might decide 
> that
> they or someone else would like to use the X they've been working on in 
> other
> sites.  At that point, they will be able to create a new Y from their X.
> They can then distribute the X they made.

Yep

> Similarly, someone might install a Y and then decide they want to 
> customize it.
> Now, they can always customize it by uninstalling some of it's 
> components and
> installing different components from Xs or other Ys.  They may, however, 
> wish to
> cusomize most of the contents of the Y and may wish to start from a 
> copy. Or, they
> may want to distribute a customized Y. They will be able to create a new 
> X from
> the Y (as opposed to converting the Y to an X). The new X will be a copy 
> of the Y.
> They can modify this new X as desired. If they want to distribute their 
> modifications,
> they can create a *new* Y from the (new) X.

Yes, but this fails to cover the crucial point, IMHO. Someone customises a Y 
(how will this work? I'm thinking the 'custom' skin layer in CMF...) and the Y 
author releases a new version which happens to change the same bits that were 
customised. How does the person doign the customisation find this out? What do 
they do about it and how will Zope 3 help them?

cheers,

Chris