ToutPT@work

let s go to word press

2008-01-26T13:41:00.000+01:00

After two weeks of testing wordpress, i got this: http://toutpt.wordpress.com/ I finaly prefer wordpress. So update your bookmarks ;)

Coding faster, doing better

2008-01-04T21:00:00.000+01:00

I have started to work on a some Pydev templates to gain times on my plone job. The results is useful but just for writing schema. The result from this first shot is available here:
eclipse-pydev-tempaltes-archetypes-01.tar.gz

So we need to do better than just some templates for Pydev. MDA is a really good solution, but seems complexe at first look. An MDA tool really well known in plone community is ArchGenXML. This code generator is useful but it use UML1. No way to do UML1 diagram under eclipse. ArgoUML is really old, and i don't like it, that's it.

Since i have participate to the acceleo minisprint, i have started to use Acceleo in my work. So i have started a code generator like ArchGenXML under eclipse with Acceleo. The result was a surprise: I have been able to generate a skeleton of Plone 2.5 product from a UML2 model in two hours of work. I think i will be able to generate a complete product in some more hours (~5). This will be soon public released.Thanks to Cedric Brun from Obeo for this little sprint.

Weakness of Plone

2007-11-30T21:41:00.000+01:00

State of the art on Plone@work.

I m currently working with Plone 2.5 and 3.0. There is many things in 2.5 that doesn't make sens for me. This post is about things i have discover in Plone that i don't like. My job is not to improve Plone, it is to use Plone and customize it to feet with customers needs. Let's go:

- Users. I don't like the way users are manage in Plone. I think this is a zope weak, but nothing has been change or discuss about that. A very good Product exists indeed: Remember. But it has not been integrated into Plone3 and it seems to remain in a beta state (since the 27 April 2007). I hope to see one day sth like remember by default in Plone or at least Remember in stable state.

- Keyword. The keyword management throw subject field sucks. In a CMS that must be very strong peace. I think Plone must be improved on that point. Object old keyword, so if an object olding a kw is deleted, the kw is also deleted. It's dam bad. For sure the first time our customers discover the subject field throw properties tab, they add multiple kw, and next, discover that the current document don't need to old all of them. So they didn't understand and call us to ask where can i put my keywords ? I often advise them to add a document in the webmaster member space to add a document called Keywords and adding all of their Keywords here. Stupid hack but working great. KeywordManager is a Product, just release today that seems to be a good improvement. I don't have been enough time to test it atm but i will.

- Archetypes sucks. Define a schema of data with associated widget to define content type is a really must have feature. But schema must be define throw the web, and a generic setup with a support to UML2 syntax could be great to define them. The Widget is not reusable outside of archetypes. I hope formlib will be better integrated in futur Plone version.

- XHTML/CSS. The complexity of the xhtml/css in Plone increase the hard job to integrate it. In naple i have followed some conference about Theme integration, and they are all agreed: Just use CSS. OK i m not a guru of CSS, and doing a pure CSS theme is not 2 or 3 days of work. The xhtml/css of Plone can be a lot simplified, and in consequence the CSS will be simplified too.

- Javascript. JavaScript sucks at all, not only in Plone, but i have work with accordion effect, and it doesn t work on Plone when authentified, ... because of Kupu's helper.js . Woooo this one redefine listener system of JS. I need to learn how to add effect with KSS now.

- Performance. Yes plone is really slow. Cache solution like varnish help us to seel Plone, but Plone is not a light solution at all. Yarn seems to has done lots of improvement to Plone. I have read some stuff that happens in the core of Plone, and starting to ask mysef, how guy could develop sth like this. But i m waiting for those improvement. There is also a discussion around TAL, TAL is not slow, the use of TAL plone does is one of the consequence of that feeling.

But Plone has more Strength than weakness, so this is not to broke things, just to say "hey this need to be improved".

Just a new blog, so welcome

2007-11-30T21:13:00.000+01:00

Hi there.

Why this blog ?
I would like to post sth about my work. I m working on Python, Zope and Plone, and i find those web technologies very interesting. I just want to share my long days of work

About what ?
I m working on Plone to make web site with OpenSource software (Linux, Eclipse, Python) So the content of those tickets will be about that technologies. For example, i have work on contact management in Plone with LDAP, so i will explain what has been done (about an already existing solution , the design of a potential product, the result , ...)