Mailing List Archive

First, let me thank you for your extensive comments. This is GREATLY
appreciated!

On Mon, 14 Feb 2000, Darcy Clark wrote:

> FYI - some notes from my first look at the PTK. At first I was a little
> daunted by the prospect of having to use CVS to download the PTK, but I
> just *had* to check it out.....anyway, CVS wasn't that hard to get the
> hang of and the instructions at
> http://classic.zope.org:8080/Community/CVS_public_access were very
> helpful.
>
> I'm running 2.1.3 under WinNT Server 4.0. The install instructions at
> http://www.zope.org/Products/PTK/install were also easy to follow and I
> now have Portal in my "Add" menu.

I've never tried to use CVS on a Win32 platform. I'm glad you found
it relatively painless. Any caveats?

> One small problem - the icons next to each item in the My Stuff view are
> broken. I think that was reported before.

I recently broke the icons. <sigh> I think I know how to fix them, I
just haven't got around to it yet.

> Clicking on the "Breaking News" link in the Menu, I now see my new News
> Item. I automatically looked for an edit button near my news item, but
> obviously I have to go back to the My Stuff menu to do edits....if you
> created the story or a 'super user', it might be more convenient to have
> an edit button right here.

In fact, you are supposed to have the option to 'Edit news item' in
the toolbar when you are viewing one, if you have permission to do so.
Can you tell me what operations the toolbar does offer?

> Question....how do I get this news item to show up on the Home page
> under Zope News ? In fact I don't see where to edit the Home page.

The front page is a bogus static page. You can edit it as the
'index_html' object in the Portal object itself. If you come up with
something you like which demonstrates some interesting PTK abilities,
share it and I'll replace the one that's there now.

> Question...I created a link called Yahoo....how do I refer to it easily
> in news items and documents...is there or will there be a Glossary-type
> feature that allows content to be easily refered to and included in
> other content ? (this request will be familiar to Frontier users)

There is no such facility right now. This is a desired feature. At
the PTK someone (Itmar?) requested a way to register objects in such a way
that they cannot just 'dissappear' at the creators whim, because this
breaks links outside the site. This seems to be part and parcel with that
sort of functionality.

What should such a registry (glossary?) look like? How would you
want it to work, and how would you like to use it? How can this be
implemented without making the difference between 'publishing' and
'registering' very confusing? Who should own the registered versions of
objects? Perhaps there might be the option of multiple registries with the
register's owner owning it's contents. If instead the submitter owns it,
should they be able to unregister at will, or only by the register's
owner's leave? I suppose this is easy enough to delegate with
permissions. Should the registered version track changes in the original
object? How do other packages handle this?

> Oops....hold on..I now see the Publish News Item option in the menu. I
> assume as I am logged in as a 'super-user', my content will be
> automatically published and won't need reviewing.

Actually, no. There is a cool feature of the PortalCatalog which
makes this a bit confusing. Regardless of who you are, anything you
create starts out as 'private'. The reason you can see these items anyway
is because you own them (or are the superuser/manager) and the Catalog
knows it so it does not prevent you from seeing them in searches (such as
'Breaking News', the search box, etc). You can tell whether an item has
been published or not by looking at the toolbar while viewing it. Beside
the broken image where the icon should be (:-/), it will read "'private'
object_id", "'pending' object_id", or "'published' object_id". This
reflects the object's state in the reviewing system.

> problem...I tried a search using the keyword 'test' and got 2
> results....unfortunately when I try to click the links in the list, the
> link is incorrectly pointing to
> http://testing/PTKTest/Members/darcyc/News%20Item as opposed to my
> server (http://msewww.engin.umich.edu:8080)

Thanks, I've got another report about this. Bleh. I think the
ZCatalog is in flux wrt whether or not there should be a leading slash in
the URL used to identify catalog records. I'll try to figure out how to
make it work in all cases.

> I then logged out and joined up as a member. Same icon problems as
> before. I have a default index_html document...I create a news item as a
> member and submit it for review ... where is it going ? Who is reviewing
> it ? Checking the Breaking News link, I see that my new news item is
> listed there already.....is this how it supposed to work ? I suppose
> the review functionality is yet to be built.

See my previous message in the list about making the PTK generate
email for review requests. The reason it shows up in Breaking News is
because you created it. This behaviour can be overridden in individual
search queries. You can perform searches which show only published
content, or only content in either of the other two states. The Breaking
News search shows everything you're allowed to know about.

To items, log on as the Manager (or anyone with the 'Reviewer' role or
'Review portal content' permission), click on 'Search', and find items
who's review state is 'pending' (this option is only available to the
above mentioned class of members). Each of these items are waiting for
you to click on them, and then on 'Publish [meta_type]'. This will
display the publication dialog.

> my 2 cents are that the PTK looks like it will eventually be a great
> Product. My interest in it is primarily as a tool that I can modify to
> suit my own needs. I don't necessarily want a portal tool, but the
> more user-friendly nature of the PTK (as opposed to the default Zope
> interface) and the membership features should serve as an important
> starting point for group-managed websites.

The PTK is being (going to be?) used as a place to experiment with new
Zope interface ideas. Hopefully by this time next year, you will be able
to select your Zope management interface to suit your needs and level of
proficiency. I'm trying to keep the PTK usable by content managers
(though not necessarily portal managers) who don't even know what a Zope
is.

> With this in mind, where should I be looking to get under the hood, so
> to speak ? I don't really understand the relationship between
> DemoPortal and PTKBase and PTKDemo ?

This is a good question. I'll see if I can shed some light.

'PTKBase' is what I am generally referring to when I say 'The
PTK'. It provides the basics like Membership (cough cough), reviewing
machinery, a slightly more clever catalog, some basic Portal Content
objects, etc.

'PTKDemo' is one half of an example of how you might use PTKBase to
build a portal. (The 'TK' does stand for 'Toolkit', after all.) Most of
what's presently there (the two MemberFolder modules) doesn't really belong
there at all. This should be provided by PTKBase, and mark my words, it's
coming Real Soon Now! Here, the specifics of a particular portal are
implemented. For example, you would subclass PortalObject to fill in some
hooks such as 'before_review' to implement your portal's policies.

'DemoPortal' is the other half, the interface. It contains all the
Wizards, DTML, email templates, reports, etc. It contains a few ZClasses
which tie together classes in PTKDemo and PTKBase. This could be done
entirely in 'PTKDemo'. For that matter, PTKDemo could have been done
entirely in DemoPortal with PythonMethods.

> Sorry for all the questions...I'm no Zen Zope Master...but I have used
> Zope for a few months now and plan on using (and possibly modifying) the
> PTK in the very near future.

That's ridiculous-- Thank you for all the questions!

(Let us see if I'm still saying that in six months.)

> cheers,
>
> Darcy

Mike.

--
Mike Pelletier email: mike@digicool.com
Mild mannered software developer icq: 7127228
by day, super villain by night. phone: 519-884-2434

Mike,

thanks for the extensive and informative response to my email to the
list. Below is further feedback on some of the questions you raised :

> > Clicking on the "Breaking News" link in the Menu, I now see my new News
> > Item. I automatically looked for an edit button near my news item, but
> > obviously I have to go back to the My Stuff menu to do edits....if you
> > created the story or a 'super user', it might be more convenient to have
> > an edit button right here.
>
> In fact, you are supposed to have the option to 'Edit news item' in
> the toolbar when you are viewing one, if you have permission to do so.
> Can you tell me what operations the toolbar does offer?

logged in as a member, viewing an news article that I wrote, I do indeed
see editing commands associated with the particular article....cool

> > Question...I created a link called Yahoo....how do I refer to it easily
> > in news items and documents...is there or will there be a Glossary-type
> > feature that allows content to be easily refered to and included in
> > other content ? (this request will be familiar to Frontier users)
>
> There is no such facility right now. This is a desired feature. At
> the PTK someone (Itmar?) requested a way to register objects in such a way
> that they cannot just 'dissappear' at the creators whim, because this
> breaks links outside the site. This seems to be part and parcel with that
> sort of functionality.
>
> What should such a registry (glossary?) look like? How would you
> want it to work, and how would you like to use it? How can this be
> implemented without making the difference between 'publishing' and
> 'registering' very confusing? Who should own the registered versions of
> objects? Perhaps there might be the option of multiple registries with the
> register's owner owning it's contents. If instead the submitter owns it,
> should they be able to unregister at will, or only by the register's
> owner's leave? I suppose this is easy enough to delegate with
> permissions. Should the registered version track changes in the original
> object? How do other packages handle this?

The glossary features of Frontier might be worth looking at in this
case....essentially it is a substitution table with objectname-value
pairs. When the site is rendered or viewed, text surrounded by
"objectname", is replaced with the value from the objectname:value
pair....kind of like a dictionary I suppose. FRom memory the glossary
can contain a wide variety of objects....images, URLs etc....making it
very easy to link to regularly used images and links.....for instance
the keyword "Zope" could be matched to http://www.zope.org....."logo"
could be matched to http://www.zope.org/Images/zopelogo.jpg

Actually even though I have yet to delve into the Catalog features of
Zope yet, it occurs to me that you might already have most of the
features of Frontier's glossary mechanism built already....all you need
is an easy syntax for including, refering to catalogued objects. I need
to look at the Catalog features before I am able to offer anything else
constructive on this...

> > Oops....hold on..I now see the Publish News Item option in the menu. I
> > assume as I am logged in as a 'super-user', my content will be
> > automatically published and won't need reviewing.
>
> Actually, no. There is a cool feature of the PortalCatalog which
> makes this a bit confusing. Regardless of who you are, anything you
> create starts out as 'private'. The reason you can see these items anyway
> is because you own them (or are the superuser/manager) and the Catalog
> knows it so it does not prevent you from seeing them in searches (such as
> 'Breaking News', the search box, etc). You can tell whether an item has
> been published or not by looking at the toolbar while viewing it. Beside
> the broken image where the icon should be (:-/), it will read "'private'
> object_id", "'pending' object_id", or "'published' object_id". This
> reflects the object's state in the reviewing system.

I get it now....thanks for the explanation.

One final comment/suggestion......have you guys tried editthispage.com ?
(I'm sure you have) I kind of have high hopes that the PTK will be the
open-source equivalent of what Manila is to Frontier....but obviously
going beyond what Manila is and does.

cheers,

Darcy

>
> Mike.
>
> --
> Mike Pelletier email: mike@digicool.com
> Mild mannered software developer icq: 7127228
> by day, super villain by night. phone: 519-884-2434

--
---------------------------------------------------
Ph: (734) 764 3377
Email: darcyc@engin.umich.edu
URL: http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~darcyc/
---------------------------------------------------
'If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate'
..... Steven Wright