[opencms-dev] External editing

M Butcher mbutcher at grcomputing.net
Wed Jul 7 19:45:02 CEST 2004 

Tom,

I see what you are getting at. That is sorta what I had considered 
originally (except I was thinking it would require a special editor).

The reason that I suggested that we'd need a local repository is that 
Web documents in general tend to have a high reliance on other documents 
on the same server. How would we deal with image galleries, stylesheets, 
etc?

I'm still considering the SOAP v. WebDAV question (understanding that 
there are other options)... the main thing is that some mechanism needs 
to check permissions, do the file locking, etc. before the client gets 
to edit the file -- and we need some way to manage locking from the 
client side. I think this is beyond WebDAV's current abilities. Anyone 
developed WebDAV extensions? Are they easy to do?

Matt

Tom Howe wrote:
> There isn't specifically a need for a local CMS repository, although for
> some things it would certainly help (ie where several documents are
> required in combination to perform an editing task (DTD/XSLT/XML). 
> 
> But generally, the idea is that the user downloads the document to be
> edited, a lightweight desktop application catches the download, opens
> the file in the local editing application and posts it back once the
> file has changed.
> 
> This process is simply an alternative to the one occuring already when
> the browser based editor presents a file for editing and then saves it.
> Nothing more than that.
> 
> The situation where more than one file is required to perform an editing
> task is a little harder to manage I guess. I suppose there would need to
> be a way of downloading a package of files or project and then having
> them all monitored for changes.
> 
>  Tom
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: opencms-dev-admin at opencms.org
> [mailto:opencms-dev-admin at opencms.org] On Behalf Of M Butcher
> Sent: 02 July 2004 18:25
> To: opencms-dev at opencms.org
> Subject: Re: [opencms-dev] External editing
> 
> 
> Oh, I see... the client part would function more like the TortoiseSVN 
> client (Windows client for Subversion) -- it's main job would be to 
> synchronize between a remote and a local CMS repository.
> 
> That would introduce a fairly complex set of requirements... primarily, 
> the CMS would have to handle things more like a version control system. 
> I wouldn't see that as impossible, but definitely difficult. 
> Essentially, it would pose the same problem that the current 
> synchronize-to-disk function is having. Hmm... that's a lot to think 
> about. ;-)
> 
> Matt
> 
> Tom Howe wrote:
> 
>>I wouldn't waste time writing a client editor! The bitflux one,
> 
> although 
> 
>>clever is pretty awful compared with anything available on the
> 
> desktop. 
> 
>>Some of the browser based ones like eWebEditPro are ok, but still not
> 
> as 
> 
>>good as a decent desktop one. I used to use Teamsite at a previous 
>>workplace and the fact that you could use familiar desktop
> 
> applications to 
> 
>>edit the content made the most sense. Dreamweaver for html, notepad
> 
> for 
> 
>>text, photoshop for images etc. Now we have decent authoring tools
> 
> like 
> 
>>XMLSPY available for XML editing it would make sense to use them for 
>>content management too. The Zope plugin I mention does the job of 
>>triggering the relevent application and sending the contents back to
> 
> the 
> 
>>CMS engine. All that needs to be done is catch the posting of that 
>>content, save it to the right place and unlock the file. That way,
> 
> content 
> 
>>management developers can stop wasting time developing editing tools
> 
> and 
> 
>>get on with building better interfaces for managing workflow and 
>>deployment. 
>>
>>On Fri, 2 Jul 2004, M Butcher wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>>Tom,
>>>
>>>I evaluated creating a module to do this using the SOAP XML protocol.
> 
> It 
> 
>>>can be done... it's just a lot of work (mainly in implementing the 
>>>client). I didn't want to do it myself.
>>>
>>>In the simplest case, SOAP functions would have to exist for checking 
>>>permissions, (un)locking, getting the resource, and posting the edited
> 
> 
>>>resource. Really, that's not too bad.
>>>
>>>I also looked at creating a XUL application (Mozilla-specific client 
>>>application) which would use Mozilla's composer to do the editing. It 
>>>would use the SOAP interface to communicate to the server. This part 
>>>would have been pretty difficult, though. Maybe a Python or Java
> 
> client 
> 
>>>would be easier.
>>>
>>>If enough people are interested, maybe we should try to target a
> 
> module 
> 
>>>for 6.0. I'm fairly familiar with the OpenCms internals, and would be 
>>>excited to work on the communication layer, but implementing the
> 
> client 
> 
>>>editor interface sends chills up my spine. ;-)
>>>
>>>Matt
>>>
>>>Tom Howe wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>As a follow up to a post I made regarding external editing, I
> 
> discovered 
> 
>>>>that Zope have an external editor application that does just this. It
> 
> uses 
> 
>>>>a faily standard HTTP post to send the changed data back and webdav
> 
> for 
> 
>>>>file locking. Might be worth implementing as part of opencms..
>>>>
>>>>URL is 
>>>>http://www.zope.org/Members/Caseman/ExternalEditor
>>>>
>>>>Tom
>>>>
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> 
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>>>
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>>
>>
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