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| **** BEGIN LOGGING AT Wed Jul 7 18:46:36 2004 | ||
| -->You are now talking on #schooltool | 18:46 | |
| ---#schooltool :[freenode-info] please register your nickname...don't forget to auto-identify! http://freenode.net/faq.shtml#nicksetup | 18:46 | |
| th1a | Hi Marius. I was just writing a response to your email. | 18:51 |
|---|---|---|
| th1a | I forgot to mention the Zope 3 schemas and forms. | 18:51 |
| th1a | In my initial reply. | 18:52 |
| th1a | I'm not sure _when_ will be the best time to add that code to SchoolTool, however. | 18:52 |
| th1a | I'm guessing it would be very helpful for doing the complex forms needed for results tracking. | 18:53 |
| th1a | But perhaps not necessary for calendaring, which should probably have relatively simple forms. | 18:54 |
| mgedmin | I suspect that the work needed to integrate zope 3 forms with schooltool will be more than the gain of using them, at least initially | 19:02 |
| SteveA | one thing to bear in mind is that there are at least two books on zope 3 being produced, as well as other documentation | 19:03 |
| th1a | Now I'm confused, Marius, because your email made it seem like you thought we should add Zope 3 schemas and forms. | 19:10 |
| mgedmin | yes :-) | 19:13 |
| th1a | So you think we should do it for the long run, but there won't be much immediate payoff. | 19:14 |
| mgedmin | I think we should mostly because stevea thinks we should | 19:14 |
| mgedmin | and because I understand that reinventing the wheel is not a good idea in general | 19:14 |
| mgedmin | I expect some complications because I do not know zope 3 source code inside out | 19:15 |
| th1a | It does seem like using Zope 3 schemas would be very helpful when people want to quickly write small applications to run on SchoolTool. | 19:16 |
| mgedmin | I'm unconditionally in favour of schemas | 19:16 |
| mgedmin | it is forms that I have reservations about | 19:16 |
| SteveA | the forms code is good, but I feel it is still rather immature. | 19:17 |
| SteveA | The widget code is better than the forms code. | 19:17 |
| th1a | What's the difference between widgets and forms? | 19:17 |
| mgedmin | I'd also like to know that | 19:18 |
| SteveA | a widget is the UI representation of a field | 19:18 |
| SteveA | a field is an element of a schema | 19:18 |
| SteveA | a form is a particular use of one or more schema's widgets | 19:18 |
| SteveA | for example, an edit form is a way of presenting the writable fields from a schema as widgets into which values can be entered / amended | 19:19 |
| SteveA | and then, provided the schema validates, these values can be set in the object that provides the schema | 19:19 |
| th1a | So the presentation step is least mature? | 19:20 |
| SteveA | I just mailed thomas black again about the dns changes. | 19:20 |
| th1a | Thanks. | 19:20 |
| SteveA | the presentation part is much less mature than the schema stuff | 19:20 |
| SteveA | I think the "presentation of widgets into a form" stuff is most zope3-specfic | 19:21 |
| SteveA | but, I haven't used it in a while. just read the messages on the mailing list, talked to people etc. | 19:21 |
| mgedmin | actually, the part where I expect difficulties would be switching to zope publication instead of our own ad-hoc traversal + view lookup code, which is a very thin layer on top of twisted.web | 19:22 |
| mgedmin | plus adding all the registries, services, adapters, utilities that zope 3 forms/widgets/views require | 19:23 |
| mgedmin | and zcml | 19:23 |
| th1a | Does all that follow from adding schemas and forms? | 19:24 |
| th1a | Oh. I guess you just said that. | 19:24 |
| th1a | How much work would adding schemas entail? | 19:25 |
| mgedmin | very little I expect | 19:26 |
| th1a | The thing is, I don't want to delay the calendaring release, but I'd like the calendaring release to test the architecture we'll be using going forward. | 19:26 |
| SteveA | mgedmin: I may be able to share the code I've been working on for mark's other project which uses zope3 libraries but with a non-zope3-ish application, if that will help. Would need to talk to mark about it. | 19:27 |
| th1a | Well, this seems like the toughest design decision at this point. | 19:29 |
| th1a | I guess XP would dictate that we shouldn't add stuff until we actually need it. | 19:30 |
| SteveA | I'm particularly keen to see the schooltool event system be replaced with the zope3 event system | 19:34 |
| SteveA | the zope3 one is simpler, and better thought through | 19:34 |
| SteveA | (I designed it with Jim and others, taking learning from the schooltool event system and also from the older zope3 one) | 19:35 |
| SteveA | and thus, easier to document and develop for | 19:35 |
| SteveA | maybe we should make two documents | 19:35 |
| SteveA | one for features etc. | 19:35 |
| SteveA | one for desirable refactorings | 19:36 |
| SteveA | then, we can see how they interact | 19:36 |
| th1a | I suppose we could release a calendar server with a slightly fleshed out version of the current code, | 19:47 |
| th1a | while doing the Zope 3 work in parallel for the "full" SchoolTool platform. | 19:47 |
| th1a | I've got to run for a few minutes... | 19:48 |
| th1a | Any thoughts about doing those two things in parallel? | 20:38 |
| th1a | Anyhow, your idea for the two documents is probably a good one, Steve, although I don't think I understand the low level issue enough to contribute much. | 21:06 |
| mgedmin | +1 for two documents | 21:07 |
| mgedmin | ideally a refactoring will be done if it makes one of the actual goals (like calendaring views) easier | 21:08 |
| mgedmin | s/will/should/ | 21:08 |
| th1a | Could you start something up on the wiki, Marius? | 21:10 |
| mgedmin | uhh | 21:13 |
| mgedmin | I think I'm not the one who should do this | 21:13 |
| mgedmin | I did not come up with the ideas for the refactorings | 21:13 |
| mgedmin | neither I did come up with use cases for calendaring | 21:14 |
| th1a | Ok, | 21:14 |
| th1a | What do we mean by features in this case? | 21:14 |
| mgedmin | in fact, I was looking forward to reading about things to understand the goals more clearly ;) | 21:14 |
| th1a | Are we talking about calendaring features or more internal features of the platform? | 21:15 |
| mgedmin | I think it makes sense to talk about calendaring features first | 21:15 |
| mgedmin | and see which internal features would make it easy to implement those | 21:15 |
| th1a | Overall that makes sense, but I'm just worried that we need to stablilize the internal features in the same timeframe | 21:16 |
| th1a | if we expect other people do develop new systems on the platform. | 21:17 |
| th1a | I guess regardless I'll be working hard on the calendaring specs next week. | 21:18 |
| th1a | That may answer more of these questions than I think. | 21:18 |
| mgedmin | what do you call 'internal features'? | 21:20 |
| mgedmin | internal Python APIs? | 21:20 |
| mgedmin | or the RESTive interface? | 21:20 |
| th1a | The Python API, I suppose. | 21:21 |
| th1a | Perhaps this is less a problem than I think. | 21:22 |
| th1a | I guess switching to the Zope 3 event model might be transparent to the rest of the application, for example. | 21:23 |
| th1a | Or at least that's sorta the idea of OOP. | 21:23 |
| th1a | If all the refactorings are still implementing the same interfaces, I guess it doesn't make much of a difference to people developing Python apps with SchoolTool. | 21:24 |
| th1a | On the other hand, it seems like schemas and form generation would be exposed directly to an application developer. | 21:36 |
| *mgedmin thinks | 21:36 | |
| mgedmin | so far we were using XP's no-upfront-design, refactor-mercilessly developement style | 21:36 |
| th1a | Right. | 21:37 |
| th1a | But if we're developing a platform, it seems like at some point we have to stabilize it for other developers. | 21:37 |
| mgedmin | I'm not entirely sure the current Python APIs are exactly what would be needed by an external Python app based on schooltool | 21:37 |
| th1a | I don't mean external--we need to firm up some terminology | 21:37 |
| th1a | for things like assessment tracking. | 21:38 |
| th1a | Which should work similarly to a Zope product. | 21:38 |
| th1a | Not part of the core. | 21:38 |
| th1a | Easily replaced. | 21:38 |
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| th1a | We can't have someone write a whole assessment system and then say "Oh, we're using schemas now." | 21:41 |
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