www.zope.org

old.zope.org
- /Products
- /Members

Log in

February 18 Zope News

Zope News for February 18, 2002 by Casey Duncan, Martijn Faassen, and Chris McDonough

Welcome to the February 2002 edition of the Zope News! In this issue: Zope3 Sprints and the International Python Conference Report.

And now for something completely different...

Python 10 Report

I for one had a great time at the Python conference. It was so great to meet up with the people I hang out with in the Zope community and talk face to face with them. Now I know they aren't just bots hanging out on the #zope IRC channel 8^).

I think the main concern I heard from several people was that they thought that the Python conference had become too grandiose and would like to see a return to simpler (and cheaper) events. I can see their point, but I do think it is nice to have such a high-profile event to promote the use of Python and Zope and make it look like the "big deal" that we all think it is.

Day One, Tutorials

The first day was for tutorials, and I arrived bright and early to deliver the Zope talk. We had a pretty full house, and many people had good questions about the system. One realization I came upon was that there is really no need for me to teach DTML anymore in the tutorial. I also would like to give a second "intermediate" tutorial about using Python in Zope since there never seems to be time for it in just one 4 hour session. Something to think about for the open source conference in July.

Several of the attendees were high school students who are apparently using Zope in their computer science studies. That really impressed me. I hope they all stick with it and continue to use open source tools and be part of this great community.

In the afternoon I stuck my head in a couple of other tutorials. One on building GUIs in Python using a variety of different libraries for comparison and also the end of Jim's component architecture tutorial, which I had already lived a few days earlier at the Zope3 sprint.

Day Two

On Tuesday, Andrew Koenig gave his keynote comparing several very different languages including APL, Snobol, ML and Fortran to Python. In his talk he highlighted the strengths and weaknesses of each language in a given problem domain and how Python transcends many of the limitations of these languages. He also told us a bit about his cats, one of which is named "snobol" because like the language he is a "good string manipulator". I thought he was a very good speaker, who was able to tell us something about Python, even though may of us may know more about it than he currently does!

Following the keynote, the Zope track continued with Tony Byrne's comparison of content-management systems. This was followed by a very impressive demo of a Zope based content-management system now in use by NATO at installations all over the world. A very cool Zope testimonial! From what I hear though, there is little chance of a ZWarGames product resulting from it, dang!

In the afternoon, Paul Everitt gave his "state of the Zope nation" talk which consisted of a bunch of questions about Zope2, Zope3 and whatever Zopes might be in between. Jim Fulton followed with his talk about Zope3 and what it is all about (synopsis: it rocks!). To elaborate a bit, there is some very innovative stuff going on in Zope right now, and if you have any inclination to contribute, now is a great time because the system is still being defined (IOW you can't really break anything!). If you don't feel confident enough to contribute code, contribute ideas, documentation or even graphics talent to the new Zope3 ZMI!

Day Three

Wednesday kicked off with Stephan Richter, arguably the best dressed person in the Zope community, showing off how to internationalize and localize Zope applications using ZBabel. He also showed us DBObjects which looks like a trick way to integrate relational data into Zope. Another cool application he showed was ZQuest, an automated tool for teachers to use to give tests. All-in-all some very good work!

Following that I gave a short talk on some new templating ideas I have been thinking about (basically server-side css) and Kapil Thangavelu talked about his ideas for an event channel system for Zope.

Andy McKay of Zopezen fame told us about ZSyncher a way to automate the tedious task of pushing code into production, and David Hancock gave us some insights into designing high-availability Zope applications from his own experience with an airline messaging system he built using Zope.

The closing keynote was given by Tim Berners-Lee, who without surprise is out to "Webize" everything in sight. He had some very interesting ideas about using URIs as unique global identifiers for Python packages. From a package managment perspective it made a lot of sense. He also would like to see a new "graph" data structure become native in Python. From what I could understand (Tim is a bit of a fast speaker), this would allow you to directly represent RDF style statements in Python so that you could easily generate descriptive data maps. It will be interesting to see if any of these ideas come to fruition in the Python language. I'm a tad bit skeptical, but one never knows.

Links, Links, Links

Here are some additional post-conference resources for your browsing pleasure:

Zope Track Presentation Materials

http://www.zope.org/Resources/IPC10/presentations

Conference Photo Album

http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/Photos/Python10

Slides from Andrew Koenig's Keynote: "Notes from a polyglot outsider"

http://www.research.att.com/~ark/talks/Python10.pdf

Slides from Tim Berners-Lee Keynote: "Webizing Python"

http://www.w3.org/2002/Talks/0206-python/slide1-0.html

Slides from Guido's Dev Day Keynote:

http://www.python.org/doc/essays/ppt/python10/py10keynote.pdf

Adam Kendall gets excited about Zope3

http://www.zopelabs.com/mak/1012945631

Howard Butler's weblog with IPC commentary

http://www.hobu.net:81/

Andy McKay's IPC coverage on zopezen.org

Student video: "Introducing Python"

http://www.ibiblio.org/obp/pyBiblio/pythonvideo.php

{ CD }

Zope3 Sprints

I had the privilege of attending the Zope 3 sprints both before and after the Python conference, January 31st and February 8th. A sprint is an extreme programming (XP) term for an intense hacking session where a small group of programmers pair off and attack small tasks to push the code forward, and also learn the system. Tres Seaver gets the credit for pushing this idea as a way to inject some healthy community involvement in the development of Zope3.

There had already been one sprint on January 16 to begin coding internationalization support for Zope 3, but from what I heard it was more of a "summit" than a sprint. It does seem like there is a big push to get Zope international aware and I am pretty optimistic that this will happen for Zope 3.

The Jan 31st sprint was attended by Steve Alexander, Fred Drake, Jim Fulton, Shane Hathaway, Amos Lattier and Kapil Thangavelu. It started a bit slowly, as Jim went through the tutorial, but I felt very satisfied with the work I did pairing briefly with Shane and then with Steve. We made some improvements to several parts of the component architecture and the Zope3 configuration language (zcml). Kapil and I sparred over the virtues of vim vs. emacs (vim 6.0 rocks, get your own show Kapil!), and he and Jim did some heavy debugging in the bowels of Zope and Python.

By the third day I was pretty spent, but I felt very good about what I had learned and accomplished. I also got really revved about the Zope3 architecture which is a refreshing change from my daily Zope2 dealings. There's something so liberating (and a little scary) about being able to start from a clean sheet. You quickly realize how much there is to a system like Zope.

After the conference there was what can only be characterized as a "mega-sprint" extravaganza. Jim and Paul seemed a little panicked when they realized the sheer number of people that had signed up during the conference. Jim took a group of new sprinters upstairs and Tres babysat us downstairs. There was a constant flow of coffee, bagels, donuts and cvs commits. A couple of the commits were a tad bit premature, so ummm, the state of the code was a bit squirrelly from time to time. None-the-less I think a good bit of forward progress was made, and many new Zope3 converts were created! (Note to future sprinters: make sure to write the unit tests and make them "pass" before committing)

I had a blast pairing with Steve Spicklemire and Anthony Baxter who's vi skills I cannot begin to match (or Unix skills for that matter). Four teams attacked symmetric aspects of the hugely cool and featureful Zope3 security system, and much new infrastructure was built. There were a few pieces left to be picked up after the crew left, but hey, what's a few spilled bits among friends?

There are more sprints schedules including one in England on Feb 21 to begin building the next-gen ZCatalog and another in April in conjunction with Beehive's Zope BBQ in Berlin. I certainly hope to attend more sprints and get to hang out with more of the Zope community's best-and-brightest. My experience so far has definitely been incredibly positive and it makes me feel much more in touch with the community as a whole. I think Zope Corp. deserves a big "thank you" for their efforts in coordinating and facilitating the sprints.

Sponsoring a sprint is a great way to get directly involved with the building of Zope3, not to mention face time and free training and consulting from the best in the Zope biz (the ZC'ers aren't too shabby either 8^). Contact Paul Everitt ([email protected]) for details on how your company can host a Zope3 sprint.

Zope3 Sprint Page

http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture/SprintSchedule

Summary and discussion of i18n sprint:

http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/ComponentArchitecture/UnicodeOrUTF8

Sprint Photo Album

http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/Photos

{ CD }

EuroZope

EuroPython Conference

The European Python and Zope Conference for 2002 is scheduled to take place June 26-28 in Charleroi, Belgium (near Brussels). This will be the first major event in Europe dedicated to Python and its applications. Since both Python and Zope are seeing wide use throughout Europe, members of the community felt the time was right to organize a major gathering. Guido van Rossum, will deliver a keynote address at the conference.

The EuroPython conference will include a track for Zope to run in parallel with other Python applications. There will also be a meeting of the EuroZope Association, which is dedicated to the promotion and support of Zope in Europe.

The conference organizers are welcoming community participation with the event. Go to the conference Web site and join the mailing list to find out how you can contribute.

Conference home page:

http://www.europython.org

EuroPython mailing list:

http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/europython

Join The EuroZope Association

To show your support and commitment to Zope's success in Europe, you can now join the EuroZope Association:

http://www.eurozope.de/EuroDe/Members

Joining EuroZope will help the organization fulfil its role as a Zope advocate and provide resources for organizing Zope related events in Europe.

{ CD / MF }

Zope.org Almanac

The Zope.org almanac provides links to Zope.org-user-contributed news items, new and modified Zope related software, and various "how-to" documents.

News Items

Zope/Python in Healthcare List Opens

"http://www.zope.org/Members/ivaldes1/Zope_Python%20in%20healthcare%20list": http://www.zope.org/Members/ivaldes1/Zope_Python%20in%20healthcare%20list

mxDateTime product version 0.3.0 released

http://www.zope.org/Members/nuxeo/news/mxDateTime03

DocumentLibrary Moves to SourceForge

http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/DocumentLibrary_SF

New Link for Zope Membership Component

http://www.zope.org/Members/tjreo/zmc_newlink

FunctionalTests 0.1 Released

http://www.zope.org/Members/tseaver/FunctionalTests/announce-0.1

MetaPublisher 1.2.8 released.

http://www.zope.org/Members/beehive/MetaPublisher1dot2dot7.html

zope-forum.org now archives the Zope mailinglist

http://www.zope.org/Members/JensM/ZopeForum

my-zope.org: rate/comment products/howtos

http://www.zope.org/Members/kedai/my-zope

IEXPO2002 Zope and CMF on two boots

http://www.zope.org/Members/robertr/IEXPO

IE Booster: additional context menu entries for Internet Explorer

http://www.zope.org/Members/paessler/ie-booster

ImportNTGroups 1.0 released

"http://www.zope.org/Members/igorleturia/ImportNTGroups%201.0%20released": http://www.zope.org/Members/igorleturia/ImportNTGroups%201.0%20released

Version 1.1.0 of ZCGI is now available.

http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/ZCGI/ZCGI-1.1.0

Codeit launches ZopeBible.com

http://www.zope.org/Members/webmaven/NewsItems/zopebible_annce

IPC 10 is being Blogged

http://www.zope.org/Members/webmaven/NewsItems/ipc10blog

ZMailIn 1.0.1 Now Available

http://www.zope.org/Members/NIP/ZMailIn/1_0_1

Andrew Kuchling wins Frank Willison award

http://www.zope.org/Members/webmaven/NewsItems/willison_award_1

First Release of ManageInZODB

http://www.zope.org/Members/mithro/ManageInZODB/FirstRelease

Introduction of free software into the German parliament (Bundestag).

http://www.zope.org/Members/aldemir/Linux

First release of Emil_Email_Client

http://www.zope.org/Members/andorsch/Emil_Email_Client/emil_release0.1

Localizer mailing list

http://www.zope.org/Members/nuxeo/news/LocalizerMailingList

NuxWidgets released

http://www.zope.org/Members/nuxeo/news/NuxWidgets01

Zope Book for Zope 2.5 Released

http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/ZopeBook25

Zope/Python Developer Wanted, Washington, DC

http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/nlada-position

How Tos

Pack the database with Xron

http://www.zope.org/Members/hobu/xron_pack_database

Howto use install.sh for lazy Zope / CMF installation

http://www.zope.org/Members/acki/lazyInstall/usage-0.0.4

Quickie Apache + Zope setup using VHM

http://www.zope.org/Members/Jace/apache-vhm

C�mo Crear un Producto

http://www.zope.org/Members/rociana/misHowTo/crearUnProducto

How to use Oracle LOBS/BLOBS/CLOBS

http://www.zope.org/Members/peterb/oracle_lobs

Generating unique id's on windows

http://www.zope.org/Members/andym/GUID

Configuring Squid as an Accelerator for Zope

http://www.zope.org/Members/htrd/howto/squid

An easier way to write products

http://www.zope.org/Members/maxm/HowTo/easyProduct

how to accellerate virtual host zope with squid

http://www.zope.org/Members/bowerymarc/squid-zserver-virtual

HowTo: Make a self-installing Win32 Zope site for distribution

http://www.zope.org/Members/NIP/CustomWin32Installer

Zope and Python on Mac OS X v. 10.1.x

http://www.zope.org/Members/jens/docs/zope_osx

My NFGnav-based Sitemap

http://www.zope.org/Members/mwr/NFGnav_Sitemap

How to add a folder

http://www.zope.org/Members/callas/addfolder_html

Strip HTML-tags

http://www.zope.org/Members/mnemonic/engl/python/striphtml

Apache-DSO-Fastcgi-Zope-ZEO installation

"http://www.zope.org/Members/gking/ZEO%20install%20on%20openBSD": http://www.zope.org/Members/gking/ZEO%20install%20on%20openBSD

Compiling ZMySQLDA for Zope 2.4 on win32 with MSVC

"http://www.zope.org/Members/isalsberg/MySQLDA/Compiling_ZMySQLDA_%20win32": http://www.zope.org/Members/isalsberg/MySQLDA/Compiling_ZMySQLDA_%20win32

Tips

Get size of an uploaded file

http://www.zope.org/Members/drewp/uploadedFileSize

Software Products

CMF Web Agent

http://www.zope.org/Members/hellmann/CMFWebAgent

Microsoft Passport Interface

http://www.zope.org/Members/andym/Passport

Computer Documentation Product

http://www.zope.org/Members/cmoerz/ComputerDoku

ZSession Product

http://www.zope.org/Members/ghale/ZSession

DTML Calendar Tag

http://www.zope.org/Members/teyc/CalendarTag

SmartSections - HTML Pages for everyone

http://www.zope.org/Members/srichter/Products/SmartSections

A modification of ZSyncer: sends and receives objects through the net, with xml-rpc and SSL XML-RPC. Requires ZSyncer and m2Crypto

http://www.zope.org/Members/jmunoz/ZSyncerMuteSSL

Updates Workflows from Openflow 0.4 to Openflow 0.5

http://www.zope.org/Members/jmunoz/OpenflowUpdater

mxm Relation product

http://www.zope.org/Members/maxm/productList/mxmRelations

ZDataQueryKit - Query Databases Without Programming

http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/ZDataQueryKit

RDFGrabber: Grab and parse RDF file

http://www.zope.org/Members/EIONET/RDFGrabber

Korean capable Splitter

http://www.zope.org/Members/plusaqua/HAMSplitter

External File

http://www.zope.org/Members/arielpartners/ExternalFile

LDAPUserManager

http://www.zope.org/Members/jens/LDAPUserManager

LDAPLoginAdapter

http://www.zope.org/Members/jens/LDAPLoginAdapter

plone skin

http://www.zope.org/Members/runyaga/CMFPloneSkin

dtml-forest is a variant of dtml-tree with better state handling

http://www.zope.org/Members/anlei/dtml-forest

ReplaceSupport

http://www.zope.org/Members/shh/ReplaceSupport

Portail Pour Tous (Portal For All)

http://www.zope.org/Members/dgeorgieff/popoto

Tutorial

http://www.zope.org/Members/gmarques/Estudo/Tutorial

Photo and Photo Folder

http://www.zope.org/Members/rbickers/Photo

UNIX Zope security patches

http://www.zope.org/Members/zigg/UnixSecurityPatch

Localized DateTime class

http://www.zope.org/Members/spinwing/localized_DateTime

LUF Content Management System

http://www.zope.org/Members/regebro/luf_cms

Formulator

http://www.zope.org/Members/faassen/Formulator

ImportNTGroups

http://www.zope.org/Members/igorleturia/ImportNTGroups

CMF tools for XUF

http://www.zope.org/Members/NIP/XUFTools

ZSyncer

http://www.zope.org/Members/andym/ZSyncer

Lazy Zope / CMF installer

http://www.zope.org/Members/acki/lazyInstall

Rewriter

http://www.zope.org/Members/andym/Rewriter

Weblog and Filesystem File/Img content objs for Zope CMF

http://www.zope.org/Members/jeffsasmor/CMFOptions

Kube for Zope Page Templates

http://www.zope.org/Members/ike/Kube/Kube1.0

CMF-based MailMessage and MailFolder objects

http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/CMFMail

CMF-based Address Book

http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/CMFUsrManOrg

Splitter for Japanese text

http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/JCodeSplitter

ZEO ClientStorage

http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/MountedStorage

Zope's ZPublisher Client meets Python's CGIHTTPServer!!

http://www.zope.org/Members/natsukashi/Products/ZPublisherClientMonkeyPatch

Easy Publisher

http://www.zope.org/Members/regebro/easypublisher

SqSQL

http://www.zope.org/Members/dlpierson/SqSQL_0-1-0

The Z Content Management Interface by X3ng

http://www.zope.org/Members/sidnei/ZCoMIX

Zope CGI

http://www.zope.org/Members/haqa/ZCGI

ZMailIn

http://www.zope.org/Members/NIP/ZMailIn

CSplitter

http://www.zope.org/Members/tcchou/CSplitter

Call Profiler - profile your Zope website

http://www.zope.org/Members/richard/CallProfiler

PyscoPG Postgres Database Adapter

http://www.zope.org/Members/fog/psycopg

ManageInZODB

http://www.zope.org/Members/mithro/ManageInZODB

Standalone ZODB Product

http://www.zope.org/Products/StandaloneZODB

Monitor recent Zope log activity

http://www.zope.org/Members/howardhansen/logwatch

Localizer Internationalization Product

http://www.zope.org/Members/nuxeo/Products/Localizer

MailBoxer

http://www.zope.org/Members/mjablonski/MailBoxer

StarRave

http://www.zope.org/Members/element/StarRave

My Media Manager

http://www.zope.org/Members/gittew/MyMediaManager

SQL Forms

http://www.zope.org/Members/Ioan/SQLForms

Emil_Email_Client

http://www.zope.org/Members/andorsch/Emil_Email_Client

FakeFolder and FakeOrderedFolder

http://www.zope.org/Members/poster/Fakers

Virtual Host Folder

http://www.zope.org/Members/poster/VHF

CMF Virtual Host

http://www.zope.org/Members/poster/CMFVirtualHostTool

RDFSummary - display RSS files

http://www.zope.org/Members/EIONET/RDFSummary

{ CM }

Zope Maillist Summary for January 5 - February 18

The Zope maillist summary features and comments upon selected threads from the [email protected] maillist.

Static fail-over

Terry Hancock asks how he can create a setup that fails over to static content if Zope cannot be reached. The conversation bends towards Zope load balancing and failover solutions in general and as such covers Toby Dickenson's interesting ICP patch for Zope that lets it act as a Squid peer. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-January/107298.html

q: How should I get a guaranteed unique id in Zope?

Joe Block asks how to get a guaranteed unique id in Zope using Postgres and as a result folks offer and absorb Zen about the way that Zope handles transactions. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-January/106915.html

Zope & OpenOffice

Dirk Datzert wants to use OpenOffice programmatically from Zope to generate charts and graphs. It turns out to be not so easy, but he gets several alternate suggestions. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-January/107602.html

ANNOUNCE: An easier way to write products

MaxM announces his "easyProduct" product, which presents Zope users with an easier way to produce Zope products (http://www.zope.org/Members/maxm/HowTo/easyProduct), and gets many accolades. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-January/106646.html

memory leak in a very simple product. Way?

Christoph Wierling writes some code that seems to leak memory and asks the list why. It turns into a discussion of persistence and object references. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-January/106957.html

Zope and R

Ragnar Beer asks if anyone has come up with a way to use "R" (www.r-project.org) statistical analysis package from Zope to generate graphs. A. J. Rossini appears to have thought deeply about it and a discussion ensues. Reportlab and GDChart are also discussed as potential graphing solutions. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-February/108319.html

Globals disappearing in extmethod?

Joseph Knapka finds out that the files in which External Methods are defined are not actually "modules" in the Python sense. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-February/108303.html

5 upgrade, Sessions - too clever for myself
Brad Clements upgrades his Zope 2.5 beta release to 2.5.0 final and comes across difficulties in using sessioning which are ultimately solved. http://lists.zope.org/pipermail/zope/2002-February/108905.html

{ CM }

Log in

February 18 Zope News

Python 10 Report

Day One, Tutorials

Day Two

Day Three

Links, Links, Links

Zope3 Sprints

EuroZope

EuroPython Conference

Join The EuroZope Association

Zope.org Almanac

News Items

Zope 2.5.0 final released

Zope 2.4.4 beta 1 available

Zope Training in 2002: NY, DC, Paris, Cologne and Berlin (Beehive)

Various Z{P}UG meetings and announcements

Zope Support in Quanta Gold

FreeZope (Free Non-Commercial Zope Hosting)

An easier way to write products

ZOQL Method 0.4.0 development preview

iNTERNET EXPO 2002 in Zurich

Zope Online Documentation Tool released

Zope/Python in Healthcare List Opens

mxDateTime product version 0.3.0 released

DocumentLibrary Moves to SourceForge

New Link for Zope Membership Component

FunctionalTests 0.1 Released

MetaPublisher 1.2.8 released.

zope-forum.org now archives the Zope mailinglist

my-zope.org: rate/comment products/howtos

IEXPO2002 Zope and CMF on two boots

IE Booster: additional context menu entries for Internet Explorer

ImportNTGroups 1.0 released

Version 1.1.0 of ZCGI is now available.

Codeit launches ZopeBible.com

IPC 10 is being Blogged

ZMailIn 1.0.1 Now Available

Andrew Kuchling wins Frank Willison award

First Release of ManageInZODB

Introduction of free software into the German parliament (Bundestag).

First release of Emil_Email_Client

Localizer mailing list

NuxWidgets released

Zope Book for Zope 2.5 Released

Zope/Python Developer Wanted, Washington, DC

How Tos

Pack the database with Xron

Howto use install.sh for lazy Zope / CMF installation

Quickie Apache + Zope setup using VHM

C�mo Crear un Producto

How to use Oracle LOBS/BLOBS/CLOBS

Generating unique id's on windows

Configuring Squid as an Accelerator for Zope

An easier way to write products

how to accellerate virtual host zope with squid

HowTo: Make a self-installing Win32 Zope site for distribution

Zope and Python on Mac OS X v. 10.1.x

My NFGnav-based Sitemap

How to add a folder

Strip HTML-tags

Apache-DSO-Fastcgi-Zope-ZEO installation

Compiling ZMySQLDA for Zope 2.4 on win32 with MSVC

Tips

Get size of an uploaded file

Software Products

CMF Web Agent

Microsoft Passport Interface

Computer Documentation Product

ZSession Product

DTML Calendar Tag

SmartSections - HTML Pages for everyone

A modification of ZSyncer: sends and receives objects through the net, with xml-rpc and SSL XML-RPC. Requires ZSyncer and m2Crypto

Updates Workflows from Openflow 0.4 to Openflow 0.5

mxm Relation product

ZDataQueryKit - Query Databases Without Programming

RDFGrabber: Grab and parse RDF file

Korean capable Splitter

External File

LDAPUserManager