Use Cases

Use cases describe the functionality of a system from the point of view of users of the system. Actors describe the unique kinds of roles that users play when interacting with the system.

Actors

Use cases

Comments

peterbe (Jul 20, 2001 4:29 am; Comment #1) –

Here’s how I described it to a friend. My point was that one can reverse the development cycle around the design

  • the designer designs something stupid as usual and gives it to the developer and says “make this HTML dynamic” and the developer changes stuff and inserts <dtml- …> or <% response.write …%> or <cf …>

    The developer cuts tables into 10 pieces so that they depend on loops and stuff. Also, to be smart he cuts his code into many files/objects hence header.inc bodytag.inc index.php footer.inc

    Doing this the beginning of a table <table> ends up in the header.inc and the end </table> ends up in footer.inc

    After a while when there is empirical evidence that the design was too artistic, the HTML is messed up by geeky DTML or ASP or PHP code that nobody dares to touch. Project goes to hell!

  • the web application developer prepares a bunch of Python Scripts and uses TAL to print it through a template with very simple design. he then asks the designer “make this simple HTML use some nice colours and CSS and feel free to fuck up the simplicity of it if you want to”.

  • The designer changes things with the template given from the application developer in Dreamweaver and can during his development hit F12 to view it in an external browser.

  • After a while when there is empirical evidence that the design was too artistic, the boss can ask the designer to redesign the template. He can work with the template as if it was plain HTML and does not even have to look at the source (if he’s careful).

cchoi (Dec 13, 2001 4:52 am; Comment #3) Editor Remark Requested

Here’s my two bits on this:

Actor

  • IntranetEditor - An authorized user allowed to edit content on an intranet who does not necessarily know HTML, but can use wysiwyg HTML editors that are WebDAV compliant.

Use Cases

  • IntranetEditorWritesContentUsingOffice2000

    The idea here is that rank and file users should be able to create and edit ZPT files using Office2000 tools via WebDAV. Basic text, table entry, and linking is what is desired here, not full-blown page layout editing.

    I’ve tried using MS Word 2000 to read in a ZPT file, edit it, and write it back out via WebDAV. And as expected, MS Word writes tags in the file that ZPT processing yaks on, in this case tags with the characters ‘[‘ and ‘]’ in them. Removing such tags got the page to render though, and the happy part is, there weren’t that many tags. Getting ZPT to work seamlessly with Office2000 (in particular Word and Excel) would be a huge win.

    Issues

    • How to get IntranetEditors to understand slot and use tags when they don’t even want to understand HTML
    • Is the many-naive-editors model for an intranet a good idea in the first place?
cchoi (Dec 13, 2001 5:27 am; Comment #4) –

More thoughts

  • Zope’s WebDAV implementation adopts Zope’s security model. WebDAV as I currently understand it does not incorporate a security model, as Greg Stein relates:

    “The DAV spec (RFC 2518) does not incorporate a security model. It relies on any web server and file system security that the administrator configures.”:

Observation

ZPT, Office2000, WebDAV, and Zope’s security model almost suggests Zope as an Internet accessible file system where many users can do work. Is ZODB up for this?
cchoi (Dec 13, 2001 5:43 am; Comment #5) –

yet another thought

How well can ZPT files withstand importing and exporting through multiple HTML editors? We know that in theory yes, but in practice with the existing HTML editors out there the answer is less clear. Has anybody tested this?

For example,

  • Write a ZPT file in Web Browser
  • Read and write back out ZPT file using the following apps in different sequences:
    • MS Word 97 and 2000
    • Netscape Navigator
    • Mozilla
    • Dreamweaver
    • GoLive
    • [