andreasma at Free Software and other topics
I worked on a new Plone add-on during the last weeks. I created this add-on within a Python 3 environment. It runs within a Plone 5.2 instance. During the coding of the new add-on I run into an issue in connection with Zope 4 and filed a bug report.
The code of my new Plone add-on need some further testing and further coding. The add-on provides an environment to upload templates and publish them.
If you run a new website there is most often a small amount of content at its start. But later the content is growing and users may get an issue to find the content they are looking for. That’s the time when a good build in live search is needed latest.
But it would be the best solution to have such live search already implemented before you go live with your website. And if you expect your website to grow fast you need a very capable live search.
I created such a website together with a service provider for the LibreOffice extensions and templates repository. The site is build on Plone with some add-ons. The Plone Content Management System (CMS/DMS) already provides a build in fast live search. The search is already running by default. There is no need for another implementation of a live search or search function except possibly very big or special environments. But for such cases there are add-ons available in the Plone add-on repository to get e.g. Apache Solr integrated within your Plone installation.
I worked on improvements of the Plone addons for the LibreOffice extensions and templates website during last time. I finished this work yet with two new releases of the addons. There is one of them for the extensions part of the site and another one for the templates part. The new feature of both addons is mail form to get in contact with the author of an extension or a template and give the author some feedback. The mail forms are protected with a recaptcha.
The releases are available on the ‚cheesehop‘ (https://pypi.org):
– https://pypi.org/project/tdf.extensionuploadcenter
– https://pypi.org/project/tdf.templateuploadcenter/
This releases would be probably the last ones, because The Document Foundation want to change the environment for the extensions and templates website to another software.
I already explained in different contextes that I had to limit my volunteer engagement for The Document Foundation in my spare time to give other topics more room (e.g. family and sport). I stated that my contributions include only the maintenance of the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website running on Plone. My work on the website stopped already in October 2018 for communication issues. I did some work on the addons, that I developed for The Document Foundation, since then. But with the decision of The Document Foundation to drop the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website soon, I see no need to further develop the addons within the current setting. I’ll rethink if and how to proceed (most probably in another environment etc.).
I worked on a new mail form to send feedback to an author of a project. The email address of the project author (contact) is not public visible, thus it has to be added to the mail template by the new mail form module. The user of the website has only to fill in the name of the project into a field. The rest is done by a Plone portal_catalog search.
The new mail form includes also a recaptcha validation to protect the site against robot spam. The code for the mail form is published on github.com:
https://github.com/tdf/tdf.templateuploadcenter inside the account of The Document Foundation (TDF). I’ll add some further additions and publish a new release of the Plone addon during the next days. If the new release should be used on the LibreOffice templates website a member of the TDF infra team would need to run an update on the TDF server.
It’s always a shame if people present at a tech conference without the necessary knowledge on the background. The LibreOffice extensions and templates website had never a single sign on solution, because there were no such solution within the LibreOffice available. This situation persists when the LibreOffice extensions and templates website was migrated to the current infrastructure with a rework. Thus the migration of the user of the site was also done without e.g. a migration to a LDAP solution.
The Document Foundation staff member, which presented about the future of the LibreOffice extensions site at the FOSDEM in Brussels, seemed to have no knowledge about this situation and also not about available solutions for LDAP integration for Plone (the Content Management System the current website run on). This illuminated the carefullness, the presenter dedicated to evaluate the current situation and the future of the LibreOffice extensions repository.
Maybe the time has been much better spent to improve the communication style inside The Document Foundation and for the review of already for publication submitted LibreOffice extension projects?
And about the LDAP integration of Plone: a bit of Googleing would have been of great help 😉
I added some further improvements of the Plone addon which drives the current LibreOffice templates website. I improved the edit dialog of the templates release and linked release module. I added some more explanation and splitted the dialog into more register. I think the dialog is a bit more clearly arranged now. I published the new release of the addon as usual in the ‚cheesehop‚: https://pypi.org/project/tdf.templateuploadcenter/
I tagged the release with the number 0.24. The release is published under the General Public License. The users of the LibreOffice templates website will benefit from the features of the new release as soon as a member of The Document Foundation infrastructure team take the time to run buildout and update the website.
I finished further improvements of the Plone addon which drives the current LibreOffice extensions website. I improved the edit dialog of the extensions release and linked release module with some explanation and splitted the dialog into register, thus it is more clearly arranged yet. I published the new release in the ‚cheesehop‚: https://pypi.org/project/tdf.extensionuploadcenter/
The release has the number 0.30. Let’s see, if a member of the infrastructure team of The Document Foundation takes the opportunity to update the current LibreOffice extensions website with the new Plone addon release.
I made some more improvements especially on the dialogs of the Plone addons that drives the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website. There are some steps to go to finish my work. My goal is to improve especially the edit dialogs thus it is more easy an fast for contributors to submit there projects and releases / files.
But I had to ensure too, that all necessary information / data will be submitted. It’s something of a balance act.
I worked a bit further on some smaller improvements of the Plone addons that drives the current LibreOffice extensions and templates website during my spare time in the evening of the last days. Once I finished some more of this tweaks I’ll publish new releases of this Plone addons.
Let’s see, if someone would be willing to update the website with this new releases.
I worked on a new release of the Plone addon for the current LibreOffice templates website. It will contain a new module for small template projects, which make it fast and easy to create and submit a new templates project and publish a LibreOffice template. I’m going to release this release during the next days.
It will need the support of a member of the Document Foundation admin team to provide the improvements to the user of the website.