Brian Sullivan: Zope/Plone

Zope a Vulture?

Mon, 19 Sep 2005 13:03:55 GMT

Apparently Zope is a common Central American term for vulture.

I haven't decided if I think that is an appropriate analogy or not :)

CAPTCHA and Zope

Thu, 15 Sep 2005 13:04:24 GMT

I thought this would be easier. I am looking for a Zope implementation (a Zope product of some kind would be ideal) of CAPTCHA to solve my comment spam/bot problem. I can't seem to find anything.

Plone in the Globe and Mail

Thu, 01 Sep 2005 18:10:47 GMT

Plone ventures into the mainsteam. The Globe and Mail had an article this morning discussing Plone.

Courses by Wire Blog now live

Sun, 10 Apr 2005 23:38:01 GMT

Courses by Wire weblog(that I talked about last week) now live!

Iron Python

Mon, 04 Apr 2005 21:56:43 GMT

I ran into this today discussing Microsoft's Iron Python announcement. I wonder what affect this (the introduction of Iron Python, the involvement/investment of Microsoft) will have on Zope or Python in general?

Iron Python is downloadable here. I haven't looked at it yet.

Courses by Wire Blog

Sat, 26 Mar 2005 21:11:13 GMT

I have been working at incorporating a weblog into our corporate website at Courses by Wire. I have chosen to do it using COREBlog. It is a Zope product (and I am intimately familar with Zope as our Learning Management System is based on it) so the Zope connection, that fact that it is open source and has all the basic components makes the choice a no-brainer.

Hopefully it will launch next week.

Favelets

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 23:32:42 GMT

Following a post at ZopeZen led me to slayeroffice a treasure trove of javascript information and tools(and other stuff) and the concept of "favelets" and an RSS feed.

A closer look -- I have been here before -- I played with the slide show here.

Zope and SCORM

Fri, 17 Dec 2004 15:31:47 GMT

I am about to embark on a project adding SCORM "compliancy" to our existing Zope based LMS (now supporting only AICC). I am currently planning SCORM 1.2 capability (since all the authoring tools that we use are 1.2 compliant- I don't know if there are any SCORM 2004 tools out there yet). I am trying not to rule out or make difficult future upgrade to support SCORM 2004 though so I am paying attention to it as well. I am mostly a borrow and modify programmer so that I hope I can find lots of examples of features I need out there.

My first step is to handle upload of a SCO -- I already have the upload and unzip features in the existing LMS. This step should mostly be working out the Python XML tools and using them to interpret and get information from the "imsmanifest.xml" file that is part of the SCO package.

Next will be launching the SCO and providing asynchronous communications capability to the LMS. I already have the skeleton of a Javascript API adaptor. My current plan is to use XMLHTTP as the communications mechanism -- it seems to provide the widest possible browser landscape (IE 5.5+, FireFox, Opera and Safari), seems neat and straightforward to implement and lets me get away from Java -- Sun has really pissed me off over the last while by continually breaking and half fixing the Java VM.

Wish me luck. I am hoping to come out the other end mid January or so.

New Plone Book

Sun, 14 Nov 2004 16:43:41 GMT

A new Plone book has arrived on my desk -- Julie Meloni's "Plone Content Management Essentials". I have not put it to any use yet but it seems thin and little lightweight compared to Andy McKay's The Definitive Guide to Plone. From what I can see so far if you can have only one of these books Andy's would be a better choice.

Stuff I am looking at now

Sun, 31 Oct 2004 00:18:05 GMT

These are some sites of products I am currently looking at:

Asterisk -- an open source PBX(and everything else telephonic)
E-lect -- an open source Plone SCORM LMS
Thinking Cap -- an XML eLearning authoring and delivery system

Both Source

Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:26:14 GMT

I am not sure I have seen any high profile company say this so explicitly before but Novell (and Andrew Donoghue, the reporter) seem to have hit the nail on the head. Maybe I think this because I also have a foot in both user camps and like most people I often gravitate to arguments that tend to support my world view but I think I the argument is persuasive.

I get really tired of the zealots on both sides of the open/closed source debate spewing their collective nonsense. It is good to see some sensible middle ground views being put forward.

Even the name Both Source is catchy.

Travelling in Europe

Mon, 12 Jul 2004 20:24:23 GMT

I will be travelling to Europe starting July 20 and am interested in connecting with fellow Zope/Plone or fellow Asymetrix/Click2Learn/SumTotal System Toolbook users on my trip if it is at all possible (nothing formal -- coffee, a drink, whatever).

I will be in Mannheim til July 25, near Montpelier(in southern France) until August 2, in Switzerland heading towards Zurich from August 3 to 8.

If you are interested contact me.

The Definitive Guide to Plone

Thu, 08 Jul 2004 15:43:44 GMT

Congratulations to Andy McKay on the release of his book The Definitive Guide to Plone. Just got my copy and am perusing it now.

CA, Zope, Plone

Tue, 25 May 2004 14:27:56 GMT

"Computer Associates International Inc. will use its annual CA World user conference in Las Vegas on Monday to make a slew of open-source announcements, including establishing a new open-source foundation that will support Plone, an out-of-the-box content management system built on the free Zope Application server; unveiling a new open- source license, and placing a version of Ingres, CA's flagship DBMS, under it." [source]

CA news realease
Zope Corp news release

It seems that the recent creation of the Plone foundation is related as well.

I am not totally sure what this means in any practical sense for Zope and Plone users - it could be disastrous(CA recently announced the ouster of its president because of "questionable accounting practices") or positive. At the present time I just don't know. Anybody have any clues?

Frontier to go open source

Mon, 17 May 2004 13:24:42 GMT

Dave Winer has announced that the Frontier kernel on which Radio is built (and the foundation of the service that this and many weblogs are provided through) will become open source at some time in the future. I am not exactly sure what that means or how to take the announcement buried deep in a rambling post today.

No doubt it signals a large change in strategy for Userland -- but it confuses me why Dave would announce it on his site before any official Userland announcment (at least if the information is on Userland's site I can't find it).

Toronto Python User's Group

Thu, 26 Feb 2004 15:46:39 GMT

Thinking about the Microsoft event yesterday and Paul Murphy's skill at presenting, brought to mind the fact that the night before the Microsoft event I did a small presentation at the Toronto Python User's Group meeting on our Zope based Learning Management System.

Would that I had Paul Murphy's skill at presentation! Anyway I thought that my presentation went well -- probably not the kind of presentation they are used to as most there were hard core techies. But the key was meeting a group of enthusiastic Python developers.

OpensourceXperts progress

Mon, 23 Feb 2004 21:59:05 GMT

Ok there is finally some progress on my opensourceXperts.com task. Someone has made a bid. Now on to the next step -- contact and seeing if the parties are compatible and I want to really spend my money.

HTML-Kit

Tue, 23 Dec 2003 14:31:58 GMT

Just found this the other day. A super customizable HTML, CSS and just about everything programmer's editor with plug-ins to do almost anything you might imagine. And an RSS feed too!

Zope Difficulties

Wed, 17 Dec 2003 14:04:41 GMT

As an active user of Zope (and Plone) this Zop eZen posting interested me. The reference to the article on abandoning Zope in the middle of a project hints at some of the frustrations non-insiders have in dealing with Zope (and my guess is Open Source in general).

I am one of those non-insiders and have found penetrating the sometimes obscure byzantine world (at least that is the way it appears to me sometimes) of Zope occasionally very frustrating. There is a whole bunch of good knowledge and completed projects out there to draw from but the knowledge is difficult to get and many projects are semi-complete and abandoned. "Separating the wheat from the chaff" as the adage goes is often more difficult than the programming itself. Sometimes you reach what seems to be the end of blind alley with no way out.

I don't know whether something like OpensourceXperts offers any solutions to this dilemma. Watching the activity there seems to indicate that there is a slow uptake of the idea though.

opensourcexperts.com

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 00:11:04 GMT

An interesting concept at opensourcexperts.com. I haven't made up my mind whether this is an incredibly stupid idea or a brilliant one. I am sure it is one or the other. I am sure this concept exists in similar form elsewhere. I haven't seen it in done just this way though before.

One of the perennial problems of open source is getting timely information and expertise in small usable bits. This concept seems to provide a way for seekers to get what they need and for providers to get compensated. One question that comes to mind though is will people pay for what they perceive the can get for free? I guess time will tell.

I exist on both sides of this fence. I am active providing non paid support as an Microsoft MVP. I am also a relative novice Zope and Plone user. So I am torn in my assessment.

Regardless I wish those involved success.

Plone and Zope at Comdex

Fri, 07 Nov 2003 23:37:41 GMT

Plone and Zope sele cted for COMDEX. Plone has been selected among long time star open source projects to go at COMDEX 2003. Zope is elected as well! [ZopeZen]

Most Excellent!!!

Open Source, Marketing and Product Management

Sat, 01 Nov 2003 14:40:39 GMT

This post at Zope Dispatches starts to hit at some of the things that cause open source strategies to fray for me occasionally.

To set the stage -- I am a reasonably active user of open source (not Linux but Zope and Plone) -- I am also a consumer and supporter of Microsoft products (and various 3rd party tools both commercial and open source).

Some of the problems I see in open source:

Lack of co-ordinated project management -- the decentralized nature of product development make predicting release times and features even more perilous than predicting the same for Microsoft products.
Lack of marketing/product management - marketing is a two way street -- talking to customers about your product and talking to customers about their needs and facilitating information flow both ways.
Product direction is usually in the hands of developers -- they want to develop what is neat, new -- not necessarily what end users want or need. The result seems to be some good stuff ( Linux, Zope, Plone) but also thousands of "Abandonware" projects.
Open source promoters seem to include a disproportionate number of zealots who rely on FUD and Holy Roller type committment to "the cause" of bringing down the "evil empire". This gets very tiresome -- and leads to the mistaken impression in much of the general computing consumer that open source has nothing much else to offer other than fanaticism. In the end I think the fanatics do the whole open source community a huge disservice.

O'Reilly nominating both Zope and Plone for Comdex

Wed, 22 Oct 2003 03:41:12 GMT

Vote in O'Reilly's "Open Source Goes to COMDEX" Contest

"O'Reilly is working with COMDEX to organize an Open Source Innovation Area on the COMDEX Exhibit Floor. We've nominated 21 projects and we'd like you to help us select the six projects we'll send to COMDEX. The winning projects will be recognized by COMDEX and we'll invite a leader from the project to come to COMDEX and run demos on the show floor. This will give Open Source projects an opportunity to go where only commercial software vendors have gone before."

Yeah! -- I use Zope alone and Plone on top of Zope.

Why Content Management Systems are Like Relationships

Fri, 03 Oct 2003 14:12:34 GMT

From the "It makes you want go hmm" school.