RFC: The Road(blocks) Ahead
Squishdot
Butch Landingin
squishdot@yahoo.com
1
what-the-future-holds
As more people use Squishdot, I hope to enhance it to become a more effective tool for
their news publishing and discussion needs. I have sketched out a tentative plan for the
changes we are planning. I welcome your comments and suggestions.
%%
As with all plans, it can change suddenly (Update for ver 0.3.0: it already did) and
without warning. I are presenting
this for review and comment, but don't hold me to it (Update for ver 0.3.0: I don't).
These are the planned releases of Squishdot:
- Version 0.1 - Initial release. Update for ver. 0.3.0 : Planned. Done. been there. done this.
- Version 0.3 - Currently this version. Focus on usability features - based on the responses
and suggestions I get, I hope to implement those features that make it more effective.
Among the things I'm working on are:
- A preview button/page -- so that you can preview and edit article/comment postings
prior to finally submission
- Converting the dept field into a more functional categorization (like subject topic) -- although
this is under debate (alternate solution: keep dept field as is and add a new field named section)
- Add a keywords field and index for additional categorization and searchability
- Ability to modify the main page display criteria by different date periods (e.g. daily view, weekly
view, monthly view, etc.)
- Add posting date to search criteria
Update for ver. 0.3.0 : Only the preview button/page described above was implemented, and
instead an RSS/RDF page feature was added to allow content syndication. This document is now obsolete
and will be replaced in the near future.
On a minor note, we are also working on a fortune cookie Zope product (this will replace the static quote
at the bottom of the page) and we will also try to bundle in a working Poll Product example so that
you can run surveys as a Squishdot squishbox.Update for ver. 0.3.0: There are two fortune-cookie
products available for Zope which can be used to replace the static quotes found at the bottom of the page,
One is the Zippy tag implemented by Michel
Pelletier and the other is the Fortune product
by Lalo Martins. Check the Zope website for availability. Unfortunately,
no Poll products were listed for Zope2.
- Version 0.5 - first major architectural rewrite. We will start looking at performance issues in this
version. Also continue to implement and evaluate features for usability. This release will include those
features which we have put off in the 0.3 version which necessitate major changes in the
interface and/or implementation.
Among the ideas being floating around is the concept we call "article stalks" to which you can attach/detach
articles to -- something like a section page
of which the main page item list is (currently the only) one -- which have customizable color schemes,
images, etc.
Another major area of work planned for this release are user identification/customization features
so that you can customize what and how users see the articles and what they can do with them.
- Version 0.7 - continue evaluating/implementing features for usability. Our ideas here get fuzzier
and fuzzier the farther we are away from actual implementation
- Version 0.9 - last major architectural rewrite prior to releasing the 1.0 version. At this point
in time (if we ever get there), we hopefully would have had enough feedback to be able to include the major
features that are critical while taking those things out which just clutter up the interface. This will
also serve as the beta release and hopefully things (code, documentation, etc.) will get cleaned up prior
to version 1.0
- Version 1.0 and Version 1.1 -- at this point, the development model will fork into a stable release series
(even-numbered minor release numbers) and experimental release series (odd-numbered minor release numbers).
Hopefully, there will no major interface changes at this point (other than addition) so that sites using the
stable releases will be upwardly compatible with later releases. Major interface changes will spur
the increment of major release number but as to when that will happen we don't know.
Depending on how well (or how bad) users adopt Squishdot and contribute to improving it, as well as how busy
we are going to get (on the stuff that we get paid for) we estimate the time between release 0.1 and 1.0 to be
between 6 months to a year. But don't hold us to it. (Update to version 0.3.0: the jump from version
0.1.0 to 0.3.0 has already taken appx. 4 months, so this is really not likely to hold either) .
Last minute addendum: As we have begun hearing about Zope2 and ZClasses, we might incorporate this into
Squishdot to make it easier to customize. However, as we have been lagging a bit in learning about the new-fangled
features of Zope2, ZODB3, etc. so we have not determined at what version or time we can incorporate the
pixel-dust magic that will transform Squishdot into a subclassable ZClass, unless more knowledgeable Zope
masters deign to impart their deep wisdom to us lowly mortals. We've also seen the Catalog portal demo and
we are thinking a lot about how to integrate it with Squishdot (especially the personalization features).
Update to version 0.3.0: We've added the preview button and also an RSS/RDF page... -- these are the
two major new features in this feature release. I'm also working on a design document outlining
Squishdot's future direction. The next major release will probably include bigger architectural changes to
Squishdot (if all goes according to the general plan I've stated above) unless I get side-tracked by other
more interesting projects.
--Butch Landingin <squishdot@yahoo.com> (Squishdot maintainer)
%%