[Z3lab] portal specifications

Martijn Faassen faassen at infrae.com
Fri May 13 21:34:45 CEST 2005


Julien Anguenot wrote:
[snip]
>>As for the website, my personal preference would be that we see this as
>>a publication medium primarily and not as a collaboration medium. We
>>could for instance use CPS for publishing "finished" design content to
>>the web for public consumption and the like, and to draw new people into
>>the project.
>>
>>The alternative which I think is presented is to use the collaboration
>>features of CPS to do this. I myself do not have a lot of experience
>>with these. What do others think?
> 
> yup Why CPS ?
> 
> Because :
> 
>  1. It proposes everything almost out of the box. (Just need to add the
> specific content types and the layout)
>  2. Jean-Marc and I proposed to setup the portal and we can have it
> running by this week-end.
>  3. it proposes both collaborative and publication features all in one.
> 
> Let's not fight again for the the portal technology... :( 

This is why I carefully separated the collaboration features from the 
publication features in this discussion. I'm absolutely fine with using 
CPS for publication of design documents and there is no debate from me 
on this whatsoever.

I'm just wondering whether we should use it for *collaboration* on these 
documents as well. I realize it's called Collaborative Portal Server, 
but using a CMS is not the *standard* way open source developers tend to 
work and may increase barriers to entry.

Anyway, I understand now that you'd like to do collaboration by passing 
around OpenOffice and DocBook documents on a CPS site. The alternative 
I'm proposing is restructured text and a few binary assets like images 
in svn.

CPS + DocBook/Openoffice
------------------------

Advantages

* very easy web publication thanks to integration with OpenOffice, 
DocBook, etc

* Lots of knowledge and resources at Nuxeo.

* DocBook + OpenOffice can be exported with lots of things.

* CMS and OpenOffice more accessible to non-geeks.

Disadvantages

* higher barrier to entry for J. Random Open Source Developer

* harder to do simple 'diff' to see what changed

svn + ReST
----------

Advantages

* lightweight

* svn diffs, checkin mailing lists with diffs, help see what's going on.

* Compatible with what Zope 3 is doing already.

* Increased familiarity for developers; lots of people can handle svn 
and plaintext.

* Can be exported easily to HTML and simple PDF.

* Documentation can be kept in synch with the code, doctests.

Disadvantages

* Somewhat harder to publish end result to the web as no integration 
with CMS.

* Less programmable features, all very flat and plain.

> but let's
> focus on the functional aspect of this portal to have a productive
> environement for us with a nice professional looking skin that can allow
> us to start working next week.
> 
> The ultimate goal will be to migrate all this to a  Zope3 / ECM
> technology in couple of months for dog food ;)

That'd be nice, as long as it doesn't end up like the CMF dogbowl. :)

Regards,

Martijn


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