Re: some newbie questions

> Hi folks.  I've developed with Lotus Notes for 10 years, and I've also
> been working with Zope and WebObjects for 5 years. 

AWESOME!

> I've got the Skyrix InstantOGO installed, and that was actually a
> breeze and a great way to get a feel for OGO.  

Good to here.

> a) does OGO still work with FrontBase (I read something about a
> FrontBase 2 adaptor, but I would like to know if anyone has it working
> with FB3 and/or FB4).  In case people are unaware, The Whitemice guide
> seems to suggest that FrontBase still works with OGO. 

There are SOPE adaptors for FrontBase, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite.
Not certain what the various degrees of functionality are - but in
theory you could make them work.

> b) which is the best way to customize the OGO web presentation?  I
> know I can hide individual applications from the dock on a per user
> basis.  I see that there are .wod and .html files, and that there are
> also.wox files (which look like the are an amalgamation of the
> previous two file types). 

Yes,  wox is like a combiled wod/html in XML.

>  I also read that CSS was not used for styling some other
> configuration technique (components.cfg). However, looking at the
> HTML, it is clear that CSS is being used, at least for some
> components.  Is CSS now used throughout for styling? 

I think it is mostly CSS with some legacy bits from components.cfg -
built prior to the golden age of CSS

>  I found two copies of components.cfg in my installation, so that
> makes me think it is still in use.  I don't anticipate doing any
> localization at this point, but localization in OGO seems to follow
> the traditional WO pattern of different lproj directories.  

Yep.

>  For the sake of cosmetic changes (fonts, colours) should I be looking
> at using CSS.  In order to re-structure parts of the application,
> should I be looking at the .html/.wox files? 

There is a theme system;  the docs plone has various example and tips
about theming.  But, sadly, there is not real "documentation" on the
theme system.

<http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/thomas/themes/index_html/view>
<http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/olivier/NewDock/index_html/view>
<http://docs.opengroupware.org/Members/lelarges/New_Theme_for_ogo_1.1/view>

> c) I'm interested in the bundled Jabber server.  I know it is running
> as I've telneted into it.  However, using one of the OGO users I
> created I cannot connect to the Jabber server e.g. from iChat.  Are
> the OGO users automatically registered with Jabberd?   

I don't know how InstantOGo sets up the Jabberd server. Sorry.

> d) what is the best way to build external applications that interact
> with the OGO server.  I have looked at the XML-RPC API (very
> impressive), and I've connected via WebDAV.  I also read about zOGI,
> which seems to be an augmentation/supplementation of the XML-RPC API.

zOGI replaces the older XML-RPC API and is superior in every way. :)
<http://code.google.com/p/zogi/>

>   I take it that these three are all still valid ways to build on top
> of OGO.  

Yes.

> The Whitemice OGO admin guide tends to suggest that XML-RPC is
> deprecated.  Is that correct? 

Yes.  It is maintained but is unlikely to receive any love or
enhancements.

>  What are the advantages/disadvantages of WebDAV vs XML-RPC vs zOGI
> when it comes to OGO? 

I wouldn't use XML-RPC unless doing administrative stuff like adding
users, etc... where zOGI is still lacking.

WebDAV is good if basic vCard functionality is sufficient for your
purposes - and your client really needs to maintain a cache and do
searches locally.   WebDAV is also good for retrieving blobs such as
documents.

For anything else there is zOGI.

> e) I notice that there are object version numbers as attributes of
> many (all?) objects in OGO.

Yes.

>   I take it that this is one of the Zope inspirations.   I also see
> that there are comments in the 'logs' tab of the web UI that show what
> changes have happened between versions.  However, in Zope objects can
> be rolled back to previous versions but I can't see anyway in OGO  to
> revert to a previous version of an object.  Moreover, when I've
> uploaded a file into a project, I can't see that that file becomes
> versioned, which I thought was one of the document management features
> of OGO. 

Are you using a filesystem project (no versioning) or a database project
(which has versioning)?

> f) unfortunately my WebObjects knowledge is all Java-related.  Is it
> the plan that OGO will eventually run on top of JOPE? 

I believe parts of Logic are being ported currently.  I am also eagerly
awaiting them.  See <http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com/node/131> for a
summary.  And JOPE is now GETObjects at
<http://code.google.com/p/getobjects/>


> g) if I was to make changes to the Objective-C files, are these
> automatically re-compiled or do I need to have an Objective-C
> tool-chain installed as well? 

Yes, you have to compile the Obj-C bits.

> Thanks for making OGO.  I'm hoping that it will turn out to be the
> right solution for my needs. 

As do we.

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