[Silva-general] Silva 3.0

[Sylvain Viollon]

Hello,

As you may know, we recently released Silva 2.3, and its first
maintenance release 2.3.1. Silva 2.3 works with Python 2.6 and Zope
2.12, and brings lot of changes, notably how extensions and content
types are built (some of those changes where first introduced in 2.2).

The current Silva development trunk will be called Silva 3.0. It works
with Python 2.7, and Zope 2.13. Some WSGI middleware will be used by
default, for example: gp.fileupload (to get clever file widgets that
upload the file before the form submission, with a progress bar, and
where the file is not gone if the form doesn't validate), fanstatic
(will replace silva.resourceinclude and provide a better and more
flexible support to manage JS and CSS files, better bundling, CDN
support). So ZServer won't be supported with Silva.

In this 3.0 version, Silva Document will be completely removed, and
replaced with a new document type. It will use CKEditor
(http://ckeditor.com/) as editor instead of Kupu. At first we wanted to
integrate TinyMCE, but as matter of fact CKEditor is more easy to
extend with plugins in order to include ExternalSource support (this
editor supports non-editable content regions). Like TinyMCE, CKEditor
is a major editor in the web world, with more than 6 million downloads.
It has new releases every month or so. The new document type will store
its content in an extended XHTML format (for support of robust
references).

This editor will come with a local configuration service, where you can
configure how the toolbars will look like, what tools are in it, what
the default formatting options are, and so on. You will be able to
include custom CKEditor plugins in your setup if your wish.

Of course old Silva Documents will be converted to the new document
type during the upgrade process.

The SMI will be completely rebuilt a la GMail, using Javascript. It
will be optimized for speed, and stay simple. Using the forms
technology introduced in Silva 2.3, all content types will be written
using Python. No Javascript knowledge is required to create a content
type, or add new screens in the new SMI. Fundamentally, the API of 3.0
will stay really close to the one of 2.3: Silva 2.2 and 2.3 were
preparation work for these changes.

Only the form system will be supported: the old 'views' folder will be
completely gone and not supported anymore. For all the custom code you
have, I recommend to upgrade it to you the new form system now in 2.3.

Like in 2.3.1, the SMI will stay skinable, but skins built for 2.3.1
will not match the layout in 3.0. But, by default, it'll be possible to
include the logo of your organization in this new SMI without having to
develop a new SMI skin. Other options might be configurable in a local
service, like for the text editor.

For the moment in Silva 3.0, the following products are planned to
disappear:

Products.SilvaViews
Products.FileSystemSite
Products.kupu
ExtFile support: ExtFile as a product is no longer maintained since a
long time. In Silva 2.3, you should convert your ExtFile directory to
ZODB blobs.

After migration:

Products.SilvaDocument
Products.ParsedXML

Those new components have been added:

silva.ui: new SMI layout
silva.core.editor: integration of CKEditor
silva.app.document: new Silva document type

We hope soon to be able to provide you with screenshot, and an alpha.

If you have questions, don't hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

  Sylvain,

-- 
Sylvain Viollon -- Infrae
t +31 10 243 7051 -- http://infrae.com
Hoevestraat 10 3033GC Rotterdam -- The Netherlands