[Plone-NGOs] Re: Initial thoughts on a

[George Lee]

Nate Aune <natea at ...> writes:

> > The newsletter product I made for
> > myself lets me do some powerful work with Zope3 views to make my newsletters
> > from some filesystem-based templates, but is hard to customize TTW. (When
> > Zope3-style view templates can be customized through the web, as is being
> > worked on in plone.app.layout I believe, this will help some.)
> 
> Have you released this newsletter product to the public? I think there
> would be many others interested in a more robust newsletter product,
> especially if it has been built using Zope3 views.


I haven't released anything to the public -- unfortunately I have all these
products that I feel need a little more polishing or legal something something
before I send them out there, or I feel are flawed in design or are incomplete
even if they work for me; plus I need to find the time to get them up --

* CalendarX on Zope3 (I've sent to Lupa and maybe the calendarx-users list)
* A migration tool that mimics portal_migration but for other products
* A product that allows filtering of showing the byline based on what roles a
user has
* A modified contact form that allows for contacting "web site administrators"
and "organization staff"
* A half-baked product that allows more flexible display of date/time and
date/time ranges
* A product that allows importing of content from a folder in the filesystem
based on a folder structure and lots of boilerplate __init__.py files throughout
that structure
* A intra/extra workflow
* A product that allows you to set up a GenericSetup xml file to add a role
(e.g., "Partial Manager"), base it on an existing role ("Manager"), and tweak
the permissions ("Manage portal? Not so much.")
* A tool that generates images from text using renderpm
* A simplified vocabulary manager that is less intense than ATVocabularyManager

I hate the feeling of adding semi-good quality stuff into a collective to be
lost forever with people wondering, "Why isn't this maintained?" and "How good
is that product anyway?" I admit that as I see all these releases in
http://plone.org/products, before the Add On Products vision is realized (which
I sadly don't have time to help with), sometimes I can't help but roll my eyes
and wonder "Look, more products that are just going to sit there."

Of course I find the products I made tremendously useful, especially when I see
that I can use them in multiple sites, so maybe others will find them useful
too. Although I'm not a professional programmer, I'm trying hard to use best
practices, use Zope3 technology when appropriate, and use good programming
design to make things easily customizable / adaptable. Any suggestions on how I
decide what is helpful to release and how I can do it in a meaningful and
productive way? Will people be good at giving real feedback on the quality of
code? Is it really worth releasing a product if I know I mostly likely will not
have time to maintain it?

I guess a good way to do it is to first take a cue when people express interest
-- the newsletter product (which still needs a good deal of work), the import
tool product, the migration product have gotten some interest. I may try to
polish those up and get them out there, but still some answers to the above
questions would help.

Peace,
George