[Zope3-dev] Sprint Topics

[Stephan Richter]

Hi everyone,

instead of using the Wiki to discuss sprint topics, I thought the mailing list 
would be better for discussion. 

First of all, I agree that many of the topics in "Application Components" and 
"Application Systems" are too ambitious. Many of you have never looked at 
Zope 3 before (or recently), so that it will be hard to develop an 
application from scratch. Instead, I suggest that we are going to concentrate 
on the topics listed in "Basic Components", since most of these tasks do not 
require much insight of the entire framework, are well-defined and are 
rewarding when completed.

Here are some comments about the topics in this category:

LDAP

I would love to see an LDAP Adapter, like we have Database adapters and an 
LDAP script, which returns result sets in a similar fashion to the SQL 
script. I also think that finishing the LDAP principal source would be cool. 
However, PAS will be ported to Zope 3, so we might want to wait.

WebDAV

While I suggested this task at first, I really think we need to get the new 
workflow code finished before we can finish WebDAV. We will need the 
workflow-based locking/unlocking support for WebDAV's lock and unlock 
commands.

Cookie Authentication

I am all for this! This should also replace the default authentication method.

A Reference Engine

If someone is going to work on this during the sprint, they need to write a 
proposal. They should read the current proposals on such an engine and maybe 
update them to reflect the latest best-practices. This topic has caused some 
discussion in the past and I hate it, if people make design decisions at 
sprints without giving non-sprint-participating community members a chance to 
comment.

Session support

Jim worked on sessions a while ago and understands its limitations. He would 
need to write a proposal for this before the sprint, so that the task is 
clear.

Versioning/Staging

Fred and Jim recently committed some versioning code to the trunk. I have not 
had a chance to look at it myself, so I have no idea how much it is what we 
need. One needs to investigate what would be needed to support staging using 
this code. Therefore, before the sprint starts, someone would need to 
investigate the existing code and write down some ideas of what could be 
done.

SOAP for Zope

Unless we have a well-functioning SOAP library for Python that we can put into 
the repository, this will be a very daunting task. Also, we need someone who 
knows the server code well. 

Skin Improvements

**Please** let's not start a new skin, before we have settled on a final way 
of doing the UI. Many people liked the "rotterdam" skin, but in the last two 
years the core developers always struggled with the damn thing, because none 
of the original UI designers (except Sidnei who did the critical fixes) was 
to be found.

Workflow (new topic)

I think we should finish the workflow work that has been started at the 
CastleSprint. See 
http://svn.zope.org/Zope3/branches/jack-e_interfacebased_workflow/
Jack-e's prototyping is in src/wfproto. You should also read Jim's mail on the 
topic. 
* This is my favorite and I would love to work on it.

Indexing/Catalog (new topic)

Jim recently finished the fundamental code for doing indexing using the unique 
id utility. However, there are some outstanding tasks to make the new form of 
catalogs useful. This topic might be well-suited in combination with 
developing an advanced search interface.

Menus (new topic)

While I converted the menus to be subscription adapters this week, there are 
still some outstanding tasks, such as allowing for sub-menus, supporting menu 
item icons and having a menu item be available, but disabled.

Okay, that's all for now. :-)
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training