SilvaNews: document viewer and another suggestion

(moving this to dev as it's more developer-oriented)
> Interesting. I can even imagine a completely different system, which
> would just allow marking Silva Document objects (or perhaps there are
> other candidates too?) as a news item, and have some viewer picking them
> up for display... This would provide a very simple system which doesn't
> require any hefty infrastructure, no services and such (although we may
> still want to consider filtering), just a simple marker (and some
> catalog magic obviously) on the document objects (we can probably even
> solve this from the metadata, which would mean the impact would be
> minimal) and some viewer type object...
>
> Ideas?

I really like that.  In fact I have an application or two for this already ;-)

I think using metadata would work...in fact adding a metadata field to 
silva-extra would work quite well...you could use TALES to check whether 
silvanews is installed and display the field in the properties tab (or not).  
That way it would be automatic...and you would also catch more than just 
silva documents.

About filtering though, I see no reason why filtering could be part of the 
viewer.  I really think SilvaNews should have a SimpleViewer, which combines 
filtering and viewing (maybe simple isn't the right word, but it does 
simplify the setup a bit).

Speaking of another 'tweak', I wonder if it would be possible to allow 
managers to switch the date display from d/m/y to m/d/y (for us in america).  
I've been thinking about this a bit, and I don't think it'd be to tough.  
Adding a switch (perhaps  ZMI property) to the Silva Root, and in the 
metadata you could use TALES to switch the input order of date fields based 
on that property.  Of course, adding this to silva and not just silva news 
would be desireable from this continent ;-)

Cheers,
Andy