[albatross-users] Authentication/Login example for RandomModules

[Matt Goodall]

On Thu, 2003-05-22 at 12:13, Dave Cole wrote:
> >>>>> "Sheila" == Sheila King <sheila at thinkspot.net> writes:
> 
> Sheila> the docs. Although the comment information is presented
> Sheila> elsewhere in the manual, cross-correlating is quite a chore
> Sheila> for the newbie attempting to just familiarize themselves with
> Sheila> and use the package.
> 
> >> You are not alone in finding the manual less than helpful as a
> >> reference.  I have been (slowly) working on improving this.
> 
> Sheila> Not at all. I think the manual is impressive. RoundUp and
> Sheila> Albatross are some of the most well-documented free software
> Sheila> projects I've seen. Actually, even compared to commercial
> Sheila> software.

I also find the Albatross documentation extremely useful! In fact, I'm
ashamed that I have not said so before :(. Most of the information you
need is in there and as Sheila says, it's considerably better than an
awful lot of other OS and commercial documentation. There are always
ways to improve things but the documentation you provide is an
incredibly good start.

I guess the only real criticism I have is that it doesn't cover random
apps in as much detail as stateful. I've had to dive into the code quite
a few times to make sure I understood what's going on, especially
regarding the page lifecycle. I realise stateful is the main focus for
Albatross but the random app mode is critical for public facing sites
where bookmarking pages must be possible.

> 
> Thanks.
> 
> Shiela> In fact, that is one of the reasons I selected
> Sheila> Albatross to work with. (Not that there isn't room for
> Sheila> improvement.)
> 
> I was going to delay this message until I had finished reworking the
> entire templates reference chapter.  Andrew has been quite positive in
> his reaction to the work done so far, so I am pressing on.  For the
> people that are interested, you can have a look at the format that I
> have settled on by looking here.
> 
>         http://www.object-craft.com.au/~djc/albatross/tag-ref.html
> 
> It is only worth looking through until section 5.2.2.12 (because that
> is where I am up to).  I am trying to increase the granularity and
> level of cross referencing in order to make information easier to
> locate.  It is still first pass so I will be placing more detail in
> some of the sub-sub-sections.

Thanks for making that available, I will try to find time to look
through.

> 
> Some of the formatting is not right - finding directives that make
> latex2html and LaTeX do the same thing is a bit hard at times.

It's probably a bit late - a lot of documentation already exists - but
could reST and docutils make life easier?


	<snip lots more stuff about the documentation>


> Sheila> The manual would benefit from more examples of Random Page
> Sheila> apps. You are welcome to use my example, or adapt it, if you
> Sheila> think it would be useful.
> 
> Thanks.  I am going to concentrate on finishing off the documentation
> for the release.  I will try to resist distractions...  Andrew, are
> you able to have a look at the application?  Without seeing what you
> have done I think that it would be worth either cutting back the silly
> little popview application, or just adding a complete new application
> to the Application Guide that uses a random page structure.

I haven't looked at Sheila's app yet (there's never enough time is
there!).

I've actually got a small(ish) test aplication where I've been
experimenting with using various aspects of Albatross. In particular it
does:

      * Simple loops, where the CSS class is changed per row using a
        lookup.
      * Paging through data sets.
      * Display a tree (it's a actually a site-map to the other pages in
        the application).
      * Simple session use.
      * Using macros to keep pages simple.
      * Custom tags - One wraps the content in a nicely coloured box,
        choosing appropriate colours; the other caches the content to
        disk for a user-defined period of time.
      * ... and probably some other bits that I can't think of right
        now.

It's really trivial stuff (thanks to Albatross!) but if it's any use you
are welcome to that too.

Cheers, Matt