[XML-SIG] Re: Maki: great!

[Alessandro Bottoni]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Nicolas Chauvat" <Nicolas.Chauvat@logilab.fr>
To: "Alessandro Bottoni" <abottoni@quadrante.com>
Cc: <xml-sig@python.org>
Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 4:23 AM
Subject: Re: [XML-SIG] Re: Maki: great!


-- omissis --
> Zope components (called Products in Zope talk) are a reality. They are far
> too difficult to build, IMHO, but I don't now of other Pyhon-based web
> framework that provide such reusability. I haven't used that many
> different ones, tho.
>
> As a conclusion, I think Zope needs much improvement indeed, but it's
> there and it works. Is it worth it to start completely from scratch ?

[Alessandro Bottoni]
I knew "Zope products" already... I agree with you about their "programmer
friendliness"...

There isn't any other python-based web framework like Zope available, as
long as I know.

Well, I think it is worth to create an alternative to Zope. Have a look at
ezPublish, PHPNuke or "Cocoon portal" and you will understand why... It is
not a matter of aesthethic or phylosophy: real-world web developers really
need fast development tools like those. They cannot spend weeks or months
studing complicated architectures like Zope just for having a simple,
working portal, like many others, as a final result. Do you remember? "Easy
things made easy and difficult things made manageables" That's what those
frameworks give us.

>
> > 4SuiteServer
> > 1) 4SuiteServer is a commercial application. When possible, I (we) avoid
to
> > use commercial application, even if the cost is very, very low. The
reason
> > of this (arguable) behavior is that is becoming a nightmare to manage
the
> > huge amount of license documents/criteria and the continuos stream of
> > licence expiration/payment events in our (already chaotic) production
> > environment. For what regards me, I abandoned M$ for the same reasons a
long
> > time ago.
>
> Beep [wrong answer]. 4SuiteServer is open source software ! Nothing there
> can be compared to M$ !!!
>

[Alessandro Bottoni]
I apologize for this: I was convinced it was a commercial product.

> > What I really need, is an open source, modular, easily configurable,
easily
> > extendable, pre-built portal. Something I can install in a couple of
hour,
> > prepare it for the customer in a couple of days and manage from script
and
> > external tools at my wish. Something that makes easy to create
task-specific
> > modules and that can accept new modules in a easy way. That is exactly
what
> > ezPublih gives me in the HTML field. That is what "Cocoon portal"
promises
> > in the XML arena. As long as I can see, nothing like that is available
in
> > the Python world, at the moment.
>
> "Build it and they will come." :-)
>

[Alessandro Bottoni]
I'm already studing the inner structure of ezPublish and Cocoon Portal. As
soon as I will have more freetime, I will try to develop a web framework of
that kind using the available python-based software (4Suite, Maki, WebWare
or whatever is suited for the task). Maybe, I will just be able to develop a
minimal skeleton: I do not know how much time I will be able to devote to
this project... In any case, I will try. At the moment, just one thing is
defined: it will be open source.

Again, it is not matter of  language religion: I just need something like
ezPublish and\or Cocoon portal for my day-to-day work and I do not really
consider the existing stuff completely satisfactory.

[The reasons why I do not consider PHP (PHPNuke and ezPublish) and Java
(Cocoon) satisfactory for this task should be evidents to python users: Java
is very slow and is arguably open source (no core java source is available
for free...). PHP is not a real "general purpose" language, so you are
forced to use at least two different languages for your day-to-day work (PHP
and Perl, e.g.). Python should be the "right" choice for this task.]

See you

Alessandro Bottoni