[Zope-dev] 2nd Zope Instance

[William Trenker]

I appreciate the good advice I got here on starting a 2nd instance of Zope 
using a separate INSTANCE_HOME folder and a different HTTP port.  That 
works great!

Now I'm wondering where I can get a bare-bones copy of the data.fs file for 
the 2nd instance without having to re-install Zope using the Windows 
installer.  (I got the 2nd instance working with a copy of my production 
data.fs, but I'd like to do my debugging with a stripped down database.)

Also, I noticed in my production var folder that there are a lot of files 
named data.fs.tr0, data.fs.tr1, etc.  Can I delete these?

Thanks again for the help.

Bill
(Zope 2.5.1 (binary release, python 2.1, win32-x86), python 2.1.3, win32)



--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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[Zope-dev] Testing Zope Products with Python Debugger

[William Trenker]

I've read the various tutorials and have successfully used Zope with the 
Python debugger.  But, of course, I can't have my production Zope running 
and the debugger running at the same time unless I get Zeo going.  But is 
there another way?  Is it possible to start Zope in the debugger but have 
it open a different data.fs file for testing?  (I only have one computer 
and have to keep a small, Zope-driven web site running 24/7 as well as do 
development on a new Zope Database Adapter.)

I've looked into the Zeo How-To and feel a little overwhelmed.  And I 
suspect it is probably asking a bit too much of one Celeron 400 with 
Windows 98 to have all that running.  What do you think?  (Sorry, but "get 
Linux" or "get another computer" would be great, but aren't on my immediate 
horizon.)

Thanks,
Bill



--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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Re: [Zope-dev] Refresh makes all imported modules = None

[William Trenker]

At 09:36 AM 6/3/02 -0400, Shane Hathaway wrote:
>Are you working with products that use the old style [of product 
>initialization]?  Are they still around? ;-)

I'm developing a Zope Database Adapter (DA) for the SQLite 
(http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite) embedded database.  Although a DA isn't a 
Product in the usual sense, the front-end is registered like a product and 
has a Management interface.

I've noticed that existing DA's that I'm studying for reference, including 
DCOracle2, don't use the "new" method of Product initialization / 
registration.  Are DA's considered "monkey patch" products?  Is it possible 
to use the Refresh feature during development of a DA?

Thanks,
Bill
http://pysqlite.sourceforge.net



--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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Re: [Zope-dev] Refresh makes all imported modules = None

[William Trenker]

Lennart Regebro wrote:
>Suddenly when I refresh products it seems that all imported modules in the 
>refreshed product are set to None, because after a refresh, anything I try 
>to do always ends up with an error message like "None has no attribute 
>foobar" or "None is not callable",

I get this problem too (specifically, "None is not callable").  I've had to 
solve it by brute force -- shutting down Zope and restarting.  (Zope 2.5.1 
(binary release, python 2.1, win32-x86), python 2.1.3, win32)  After the 
restart, the product works fine.

I have searched the documentation and zope.org but am having trouble 
finding the requirements for using Refresh (other than I know that the 
product directory has to have a refresh.txt file in it).

Is it required that the product use the "new" method of product 
initialization, i.e.:
def initialize(context):
 context.registerClass(
etc.

Thanks,
Bill



--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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[Zope-dev] ExternalEditor: Many Thanks

[William Trenker]

Casey,

ExternalEditor is already shaping up for my vote as Zope developer 
application of the year.  This is a huge step forward.  Thank you for this 
fine contribution.

And thanks to you, Gabriel, for adapting the helper application to work 
with the Windows.  It works just fine on my Windows 98 system with Opera 6.02.

Bill Trenker
Kelowna, BC, Canada




--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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Re: [Zope-dev] PHP vs Zope cost benefit

[William Trenker]

At 11:01 AM 4/23/02 -0700, you wrote:
>But there are a lot of prepackaged scripts for Calendars, and database 
>connections, shopping carts,  etc... for PHP.  So there's got to be more 
>that just the prepackagedness of Zope to chose it over PHP.

Yes, that is important.  Of course, there are a lot of Products 
(pre-packaged scripts) available for Zope that do these soft of 
things.  Have you checked the Downloads page (http://www.zope.org/Products)?

It is interesting that right now there is a sort-of "batteries included" 
topic going on in this list debating the merits of what goes into the core 
of a Zope release.  But whatever ends up in the core, there are many, many 
good add-ons already out there.

Bill




--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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Re: [Zope-dev] PHP vs Zope cost benefit

[William Trenker]

I have only minor experience with PHP so this may be ignorant, but isn't 
programming a web application with PHP scripts more comparable to 
programming such an application with Python scripts?  If PHP scripts are 
handling HTTP requests directly, that can also be done with pure Python 
scripts.  But if I have to put together a comprehensive web application I'm 
going to be developing a lot of scripts, unless I use an integretaed, 
pre-made package of scripts.  But then, that is really what Zope is, isn't it?

Call me confused,
Bill


At 10:17 AM 4/23/02 -0700, you wrote:

>I am not a PHP guy by any means, but I imagine having to run an
>extra server (Apache, Postgres vs Apache, Zope, Postgres) means
>there is another server process to watch, manage,
>start/restart.  You don't have to do those things with PHP
>scripts.
>
>Perhaps someone with experience with a larger PHP
>implementation under their belt could let us know.
>
>On Tuesday 23 April 2002 9:46 am, you wrote:
> > >  Plus the over head of running Zope instances is greater
> > > than PHP scripts.
> >
> > Is this really ture for anything non-trivial?




--
"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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Re: [Zope-dev] Re: ZMI / JavaScript brainstorm

[William Trenker]

At 12:43 PM 4/8/02 -0700, "Charles Y. Choi"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
So far, the best folks have been
able to come up with has been to use filenname
extensions
Are you referring to the
Object
Type Assocation And Death To index_html  planned for Zope
2.6?
That document proposes, "to add a general-purpose facility to
Folders that allows a Site Manager to control the relationships between
file extensions, content-types and object types. This facility would also
provide a way for a Site Manager to specify the "default
document" to be used for a Folder."
Or maybe I've got this mixed up with something else.
Thanks,
Bill


"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy
to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life
. . . For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His
commandments are not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John
5:3)   
torahteacher.com




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Re: [Zope-dev] Re: [Zope3-dev] Are there Graphic Designers?

[William Trenker]

At 07:41 AM 4/5/02 -0500, Paul Everitt wrote:
I think this conversation is
trending in the wrong direction.
The core ZMI is needed to the extent that it helps build or administer
products.  Thus, Zope 3 is not like YABB.
Yes, your point is well taken.  I hesitated bringing this up in the
first place but the original request was for graphically talented
designers and that got me thinking about the ZMI as an intrinsic demo of
Zope's presentation capabilities.
I remember when as an application designer looking for a web framework
that, other than Zope.org's own portal pages, the ZMI was the first thing
to catch my eye.  As an app designer, when looking for tools out
there, I can't help but get an impression of the potential of what the
tool set can produce from how the tool set looks to me.  When I'm
new to Zope, trying to navigate my way through the tool set's screens I
am, psychologically, getting an impression of the what I could produce
for my own audience.
Of course, Zope 3 can ship with one
or more sexy sample applications, like YABB.
Yes, good point.  Let me add that when I started learning Zope the
ZMI was the only sample that I knew how to become acquainted with. 
But that was probably because there were no other examples at hand when I
installed it "out of the box".  And I'm not ashamed to say
that one way I've learned to do presentation with Zope is to study how
the ZMI's presentation is implemented.
Regards,
Bill


"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy
to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life
. . . For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His
commandments are not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John
5:3)   
torahteacher.com




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Re: [Zope-dev] Re: [Zope3-dev] Are there Graphic Designers?

[William Trenker]

At 12:47 AM 4/5/02 -0500, you wrote:
I've spent more time making the
Python docs work in NS4 than making them look good in more modern
browsers
This is sad but true.  I still have Netscape 4 here for testing as
well.  (I run into the same problem with other web technologies,
like Macromedia Flash.  Yes, probably 97% of browsers do have a
Flash player installed, but what version?  Many are still at Version
3.)  Those "Download FREE upgrade" buttons may as well be
invisible.
I don't think we should let Zope3 look ugly on old browsers, but isn't it
acceptable for it to look more modest?  With careful use of CSS, it
is possible to let the older browsers "fail
gracefully".
And it is amazing what can be done with very little CSS and lots of
images.  The page at,
http://www.yabb.info/community/,
has 2 styles, no Javascript, and looks very respectable.  But look
at all the GIF's.
If the web-centric, software-tools development community feels strongly
about perpetuating old browsers (and old web standards) then isn't it
about time for that community to provide tools to hide the details? 
When will Python, and for sure Zope, have built-in browser detection and
formatting support driven by some sort of meta format that let's us
application developers get on with developing applications?
Bill
 

"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy
to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life
. . . For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His
commandments are not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John
5:3)   
torahteacher.com




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Re: [Zope-dev] Re: [Zope3-dev] Are there Graphic Designers?

[William Trenker]

At 11:36 PM 4/4/02 -0600, you wrote:
I think we can safely rely on
CSS.
Would you be comfortable with CSS Level 2?
Current CSS standards even provide some of the dynamic formatting, like
text rollovers, that used to require Javascript .  I, for one, would
limit the dependency on Javascript in the standard Zope3 skins. 
There are still problems with some browsers in this area.  Even with
the current browsers (Netscape 6.2, Internet Explorer 6, Opera 6.01) I'm
still finding discrepancies.  Some Javascripts work, some
don't.  And there's still the occasional Java Applet that works in
one browser and crashes in another.  Any thoughts on this?
Bill


"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy
to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life
. . . For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His
commandments are not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John
5:3)   
torahteacher.com




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Re: [Zope-dev] Re: [Zope3-dev] Are there Graphic Designers?

[William Trenker]

At 08:04 PM 4/4/02 -0300, Lalo Martins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
I propose to base the Zope3 ZMI on
the Plone CMF skin (designed primarily by
the talented Alexander Limi and Vidar Andersen with important coding by
Alan
Runyan), which can be seen at
http://plone.org.
Perhaps we should take Lalo's suggestion further and collect a list of
existing designs that show what real graphic talent has been able to
accomplish.  Some of the newer weblogs, wikis, forums, portals etc.
out there are looking almost, well, beautiful.  Here's an example
from YABB (Yet Another Bulletin Board):
http://www.yabb.info/community/. 
I'm sure there are many more that might provide inspiration.
As for the perspiration, I realize this doesn't help get the job
done.  But I think Zope deserves to stand out above the crowd and it
doesn't hurt to check out the competition.
One design consideration is how much to rely on CSS.  Looking under
the hood (ie, viewing the source) for some of these "slick"
designs reveals modest to sophisticated dependence on CSS.  But I
think the days of worrying how it's going to look on Netscape 4 should be
just about over.  What say??
Bill


"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy
to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life
. . . For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His
commandments are not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John
5:3)   
torahteacher.com




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[Zope-dev] [DB-SIG] SQLite as a Light DB component for Zope and Python

[William Trenker]

At 01:58 AM 4/3/02 +0200, Magnus Lyckå <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>So, we expect to see the announcement of a DB-API 2 complient SQLite 
>driver any day then! :-)

I wish ! :-)   Actually, I'd love to try it.  But maybe there are some 
DB-API-2 experienced folks out there who could do this in their sleep (if 
they ever get any time to sleep).  The SQLite C API is really that simple 
-- one data structure pointer representing an open database, 3 functions 
(open_db,close_db,execute_sql)  and 1 callback (to handle the rows in the 
result set).

Of course I'm being a bit silly -- It takes lots of work to put any robust 
piece of software together.  I'll probably take a stab at it but I wanted 
to see if the Python/Zope world is even interested.

>I'd say a small subset [of SQL92], or perhaps sideset:

Yet but probably sufficient for a small, local relational data store.

>But it seems a bit closer to SQL than GadFly...and apart from typelessness 
>it seems to support rather extensive SELECT statements. It  might be a 
>very useful thing I guess.  There are plenty of cases where installing an 
>RDBMS is overkill.

Yes, that's what I thought; for small amounts of data a large, fully 
featured RDBMS is overkill.  Yet, often, flat tables are not the solution 
either.   Even for small data stores the benefits of the relational model 
still apply and flat files can be a real pain when the data relationships 
are complex.

For instance, as a simple use-case, consider the frequent, common software 
application need for storing configuration data.  Often, this data is 
stored in a collection of flat files.  The amount of data in these files 
may be relatively small but the data relationships can still be very 
complex.  As we all know a collection of flat files doesn't directly 
provide the mechanism to implement these data relationships.  But most RDB 
software is far too large to justify using this well established data 
technology for configuration data.  I have often thought it would be 
beneficial to have a small, low-overhead SQL engine as a software 
component.  I am suggesting SQLite as a candidate.

>If it lifts entire tables into RAM it might be very memory hungry for 
>large databases.

This is an excellent and important observation.  One of the reasons I'm 
suggesting SQLite is that it's memory model is, fortunately, more 
sophisticated than simply lifting entire tables into RAM.  To quote from 
The Architecture Of SQLite (http://www.hwaci.com/sw/sqlite/arch.html):

"The B-tree module requests information from the disk in 1024 byte chunks. 
The page cache is responsible for reading, writing, and caching these 
chunks at the behest of the B-tree module. The page cache also provides the 
rollback and atomic commit abstraction and takes care of reader/writer 
locking of the database file. The B- tree driver requests particular pages 
from the page cache and notifies the page cache when it wants to modify 
pages or commit or rollback changes and the page cache handles all the 
messy details of making sure the requests are handled quickly, safely, and 
efficiently."

>So, how active is the mailing list? And how good? I saw a subscribe link, 
>but no archive (maybe I just missed it.)

When you sign up you are taken to a page that lets you have the option of 
getting to the archives.  The SQLite mailing list is a Yahoo eGroup forum 
so to get at the archives you have to sign up with Yahoo -- oh well.

Thanks for commenting,
Bill



"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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Re: [Zope-dev] SQLite as a Light DB component for Zope and Python

[William Trenker]

At 10:45 AM 4/2/02 -0600, "Ross J. Reedstrom" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Scale, as in multiuser? Hardly at all: it's an SQL library that accesses a 
>single, textbased, flatfile for the entire database.

>As a lightweight replacement for gadfly, it looks like it might be pretty 
>good.

Exactly.  I'm proposing this as a lightweight component, just as you say, 
not as a replacement for something like MySQL or PostgreSQL.  What I have 
in mind is a small, simple, built-in SQL engine that could be used as a 
step up from something like TinyTablePlus in Zope and be compact enough to 
even be considered as a module candidate for the standard Python library.

>Note that the scripting language of choice of the author seems to be Tcl, 
>rather than Python. This probably explains the 'everything is a string' 
>approach :-)

If you look into the C interface you will find it is almost trivial to 
build a Python extension module and "bring" SQLite into the realm of Python 
scripting.  SQLite also has it's own C interface for adding expression 
functions and aggregates to the SQL syntax.  I expect this could be hooked 
into Python through the Python extension interface as a callback.

Again, the "everything is a string" approach fits in with the idea of 
"simple, lightweight".  Mind you, SQLite supports SQL expressions so it can 
do things like "SELECT * FROM my_table WHERE my_field / 2 > 23.8", or 
"INSERT INTO my_table VALUES (100 / 30.0)".  SQLite does implicit 
conversions, as required.

>The speed comparisions with PostgreSQL are very much an apples vs. fish 
>sort of thing: the pgsql server was not tuned _at all_, and does a whole 
>lot more that was never tested, such as multi-user writer access.

You could be right.  I'm not an expert with PostgreSQL so I can't 
comment.  But, at the risk of being repetitious, I'm thinking 
"lightweight".  My intent is to propose a small relational tool  that 
doesn't impose a significant overhead on the host system and might be 
simple enough that the Zope and Python developers would consider SQLite, 
together with a Python DB API and Zope DA, for their standard libraries.

Thanks for commenting,
Bill



"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy to the heart. The 
commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life . . . For this is 
the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are 
not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John 
5:3)torahteacher.com



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[Zope-dev] SQLite as a Light DB component for Zope and Python

[William Trenker]

I have noticed on the DB lists lately some concern about the future of
Gadfly.  I have been investigating a marvelous little open-source,
no copyright, SQL engine called
SQLite: An SQL
Database Engine In A C Library.  I am quite experienced with
Python, reasonably experienced with Zope but a greenhorn at extending
Python yet I had a crude but working Python extension module for SQLite
up and running in 2 days (most of that time figuring out the Python
extension conventions).  I think Python needs a lightweight SQL
engine as a standard module, and I think this would be a good Zope
product candidate as well.  I'm proposing SQLite as that
engine.  Here is the developer's feature list, taken from the link
given above:
Implements a large subset of SQL92.
A complete database (with multiple tables and indices) is stored in a
single disk file.
Atomic commit and rollback protect data integrity.
Small memory footprint: less than 20K lines of C code.
Four times faster than PostgreSQL. Twice as fast as SQLite 1.0.
Very simple C/C++ interface requires the use of only three functions and
one opaque structure.
TCL bindings included.
A TCL-based test suite provides near 100% code coverage.
Self-contained: no external dependencies.
Built and tested under Linux and Win2K.
Sources are uncopyrighted. Use for any purpose.
The SQLite source code is 35% comment. These comments are another
important source of information.
The author, D. Richard
Hipp, is a computer science Ph.D.
who knows his stuff.  This is not green software, it is well
designed and tested.  It was first released in May 2000 and is very
actively updated and supported.
Thanks for listening.
Bill Trenker
Internet Applications Developer
Kelowna, BC, Canada


"The commandments of the LORD are right, bringing joy
to the heart. The commands of the LORD are clear, giving insight to life
. . . For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His
commandments are not burdensome." (Psalm 19:8, 1John
5:3)   
torahteacher.com




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