[ZPatterns] ZPatterns Extensions

[Roché Compaan]

Hi people

I am still amazed about the amount of resistance there is on the general
Zope list to use ZPatterns but at the same time it catches a lot of Zope
newbies' attention.  To be honest I am sick of people that just write
off ZPatterns without motivating why, or just saying it's too difficult
or it's not maintained.  This compels me to write a howto to illustrate
how to do the simple things in ZPatterns, *but* I would like to test
how all of you feel about what I have to say below.

We have for the past 2 years invested a lot of time in ZPatterns and
have a huge code-base that are using the ZPatterns framework.  To us it
is still the best framework available for data abstraction and object
collaboration in Zope and we continue to use it for new applications. 
Although Zope3 and Peak are things to look forward too we cannot wait
until their release and definitely do not plan to use it in a production
environment any time soon.  In short we made the most of ZPatterns and
wrote a number of extensions that really extended its lifetime by a
mile.  I'll elaborate on these extensions in a while but my questions
to you are:

1.Are you still actively using ZPatterns?
2.Do you think we are wasting our time writing some howtos and releasing
extensions that can benefit especially newcomers, even though Zope3 and
Peak are on the horison?

Now our add-ons.

The first was basically taking Steve Spicklemire's idea of "levers" that
generate SQL and SkinScript further and making a file system product of
it.  A SQLRack (as we call it) can generate SQL and SkinScript from
ZClass propertysheets or a filesystem Dataskin's "_properties".

The second one I find quite exciting since it solves the difficult time
one generally has to make a ZPatterns app customisable by 3rd party
developers.  We basically made Specialists and Racks skinnable by
subclassing them from the CMF's SkinnableObjectManager.  To that we
added FSSkinScript, short for filesystem skinscript.

Writing these extensions gave ZPatterns a new life for us and extended
its usability. Naturally I got excited and just wondered if I am not
just flogging a dead horse or if its worth pursuing this.

Your comments are greatly appreciated.


-- 
Roché Compaan
Upfront Systems                 http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za