Re: Archetypes-oriented Sprint

thanks Kapil, currently we have about 10 use cases for Plone uses/widgets we
want to see shown in Laszlo.

It's a win-win for both open source communities.  When I worked for a
commercial CMS vendor (Gauss Interprise), almost all of my customers already
had a portal or were going to get a separate portal product and not build
one with my company's Portal API or use our default interface.  So
integration with front-end portals is a definite need.  The fact we are
choosing another open source front-end (which incidentally doesn't even try
to compete in the CMS space, unlike most portals) is a beneficial
integration IMHO.  

Laszlo also can do dynamic HTML interfaces now that are almost
indistinguishable from Flash.  Really cool stuff - check out their pics demo
at openlaszlo.org

I think most of the debate so far - and I am catching up on some delivery
delays so I will apologize if I have missed a few items in the email trail
(thanks to my companies non-open source Exchange server - grrr....) - has
been centered around getting some JavaScript events registered as properties
within Archetypes so people can more easily hook in validation routines,
form pre-populations based on field entry, etc. and for us some of dynamic
Laszlo elements.  Basically, I and my co-worker had been monitoring the user
and developer lists and saw a thread with the same need as us (we presumed
there were more) with no activity on the developer's list.  It appears the
activity was occurring elsewhere in the community.  

Since the use-cases for Laszlo were mostly centered around edit forms, we
felt it a useful exercise to add our properties' needs into the Laszo
integration Sprint.  This would bring a generic benefit to the
Plone/Archetypes side and be useful for the Laszlo integration.

What I am interested in finding out is as much detail as possible in what is
the current state of the integrations Martin has pointed out and where
further work is needed.  Bling certainly sounds like the approach we planned
to take, but it's a little spotty on details to the approach.  In order for
us to effectively put something back that is in-line with community needs,
we need to know where to pick-up.  Our Sprint schedule will be tight, I am
hoping to avoid havign to have a half day just understanding what has been
done by the developers that are joining us having to pour through code.
Incidentally, KSS is also interesting as well, but appears to be for more
advanced uses that require AJAX; we were looking to start with a simpler
solution of automatically producing a set of JavaScript event properties
that can be registered at a page-level (Archetypes object) and class level
(for individual attribute elements).  So basically, if there is some design
documentation for Bling and how it was going to be integrated, I would love
for us to review that ahead of time to guide us in the right path.

I apologize for any typos to the above, I am using the Outlook web interface
currently which is missing a spellcheck.


Cheers!
Paul 

Paul Boos, PMP
NIPO Program Manager
SAIC: From Science to Solutions


-------------
fwiw. i think its a great idea, if it can be structured with zero impact  
to existing usage.

laslo is a flash|ajax engine with xml and js authoring environment, and  
its delivery is mostly orthogonal to the ajax implementations being  
considered for plone, as its designed
for creating and developing componentized rich primarily *single page  
interfaces* easily, which isn't what's in scope or best suited for out of  
the box plone integration or the integration stacks being developed for  
that.

what would be nice is trying to distill generic behavior of what remote  
interfaces need to richly interact with a plone site, such that different  
front ends can easily integrate with plone and extensions, and are  
orthogonal in implementation and have lower associated maintenance. some  
work has already been done on this to date, by lovelysystems predecessors  
for a rich flash interface, and the at enabled bling branch includes which  
includes generic support for client side displaying field edit forms,  
validating archetypes objects, vocabulary access, and remotely modifying  
them. i don't think of any of these are necessarily definitive, but they  
identify and highlight a common need for an infrastructure api unification  
of remote access, which would make it easier for third party product  
authors to integrate with any of the front end frameworks. the delivery  
mechanisms of the api infrastructure would likely differ, the zope2  
jsonserver makes a decent candidate for programmatic delivery of data, or  
html/xml fragments, but the configuration of data views would be  
normalized to adapter/view configuration of the target front end.

iotw, if the consumption mode for laslo integration is enabling a skin  
with laslo field widgets, and changing some configuration which adapts, or  
attaches an annotation, or decorates an archetypes schema for additional  
laslo specific properties, i think its a nice win for plone, via offering  
a development/delivery mode for completely customizable rich user  
interfaces.

cheers,

-kapil


On Thu, 17 Aug 2006 06:01:04 -0700, Boos, Paul M. <[email protected]>  
wrote:

> Martin,
>
>
> I'll address your issues below...
>
>
> Cheers!
>
> Paul
>
>
>
> Boos, Paul M. wrote:
>
>>
>
>> My team at SAIC is looking to sponsor a Sprint to do some updates to
>
>> Archetypes and wanted to explore other developer's interest in
>
>> participating.  Here is some general information on how the Sprint is
>
>> being planned - the first 3 are Archetypes general; the last bullet
>
>> focused on integration with Openlaszlo, which will be a bulk of the
>
>> work:
>
>>
>
>
> I don't quite understand this.
>
>
> What is Laszlo? Why would this benefit AT? Are you talking about making
> changes to AT core (in which case you'll need to get buy-in from the  
> wider
> community and the release manager, of course)?
>
>
> PAUL> Laszlo is a presentation server - it consumes an XML file and web
> services and produces either an HTML or Flash interface.  I used to work  
> for
> a non-open source CMS company and while we had a portal API (just like
> CMF/Plone) almost all customers wanted the presentation layer separate.
> What we are proposing is concentrating on having a set of templates that
> would produce the Laszlo XML as an add-on/plug-in/maybe as a fork.
>
>
>
>> -          We would add in a set of properties for JavaScript events  
>> (e.g.
>
>> onBlur) so that these could be produced in a more tightly integrated
>
>> fashion as opposed to using CSS and JavaScript. These would be
>
>> registered on an Archetypes class.
>
>>
>
>
> Have you looked at the work going on in Bling and KSS?
>
>
> PAUL> No, but if this being geared toward a 3.0 release of Plone it is a
> little late for us.  We needed some of the event property registration  
> stuff
> yesterday.
>
>
>
>> -          We would modify all standard widgets that ship with  
>> Archetypes
>
>> and some others (particularly a couple used in building references) to
>
>> take advantage of these registered events.
>
>>
>
>
> This sounds fairly risky, and potentially overlapping with wider AJAX  
> work
>
> proposed for 3.0 in the shape of Bling and/or KSS.
>
>
> PAUL> Perhaps, when we did some searching, none of these turned up, so if
> you can pass me some URLS that explain that work, we would be happy to  
> synch
> up with them if the work is truly similar.  Perhaps we can accelerate its
> release.
>
>
>
>> -          Develop documentation for these properties and how you would
>
>> implement these in ArgoUML (or other modeling tool).
>
>>
>
>> -          We have 10 use-cases based around developing default
>
>> lzx_contents, lzx_edit, and lzx_view - these would produce Laszlo lzx
>
>> files
>
>> rather than XHTML; we are not focusing on much of the standard Plone
>
>> skinning architecture at this point - Laszlo must know the URLs to go to
>
>> for
>
>> these, but we would utilize workflow, permissions, and need to be logged
>
>> in
>
>> (if the permission set required it).  The idea is that Plone could be  
>> used
>
>> to manage content and be able to render lzx compliant XML for use by
>
>> Laszlo.
>
>> This in turn can provide rich Dynamic HTML or Flash interfaces.
>
>>
>
>
> PAUL> It sounds to me like you're takling about introducing a dependency  
> on
> a
>
> third-party system in AT - again, this sounds a bit suspect to me.
>
>
> PAUL> Not at all; this would be just another way of rendering data - we  
> will
> not be replacing base_edit, or any of the other fundamental "templates",  
> but
> provide another set of templates that could be called.
>
>
> PAUL> BTW, this email to this list is precisely a reach-out to the  
> broader
> community.  We will donate the code developed (which most certainly will  
> not
> be production ready for the Laszlo connectivity, but hopefully will be
> production ready for the JavaScript events registration to the Archetypes
> community and will also assist as we can in integrating with what the
> broader community wants.  Basically view it as a set of volunteers out of
> the woodwork that have seen a need and are working to fill it.
>
>
>
>
> Martin
>



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