[Product-Developers] Re: Where does it hurt?

David Glick davidglick at onenw.org
Mon May 19 01:04:43 UTC 2008


On May 18, 2008, at 6:24 AM, Martin Aspeli wrote:
>> * Skinning
>> Zope 2 vs. Zope 3 technologies
>
> Yes - this is probably the top of my list to unify (and also very  
> hard).

I think the following efforts would take us 80% of the way in regard  
to staunching some of the pain that new techniques have brought for  
skinners (probably targetting plone 4?):
- Add browser layer support to z3c.jbot and promote it as the  
recommended way to do filesystem customization of resources registered  
through ZCML (for those not familiar with jbot, this may sound like  
yet another technology, but really it's a simplification.  It allows  
customization of things like viewlet and portlet templates just by  
placing a ZPT in the correct filesystem directory, so that it feels  
more like a skin layer.)
- Devise a UI for through-the-web customization that unifies the skin  
layer (portal_skins) and customerize (portal_view_customizations)  
approaches.  (An entry-level skinner should not need to know *how* the  
template they are customizing is registered; just where to find it.)  
Ideally I think this would appear in the Plone control panel as  
opposed to the ZMI, to be more approachable (I'm thinking of  
Wordpress' theme editor.)  It's probably also a good idea to provide  
in-context links to customize, (the proverbial Introspector, which I  
think Eric Steele has modeled nicely in his branch of viewletmanager),  
but I think a centralized place to see what customizations are active  
fulfills a separate but important need.
- Make it easier to export TTW customizations to the filesystem.

If I'm reading Martin's 'Pete and Andy Try Plone 4' post correctly,  
this is basically the scenario he's promoting there, so I don't know  
that I'm adding a whole lot. :)  But I do think this is important,  
based on my experience trying to teach 2 quite bright non-programmers  
how to skin Plone 3.  Eyes do seem to glaze over if you mention ZCML,  
Generic Setup, or (heaven forbid) the Zope Component Architecture...

David Glick
Project Associate
ONE/Northwest

New tools and strategies for engaging people in protecting the  
environment

http://www.onenw.org
davidglick at onenw.org
(206) 286-1235 x32

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