[Typo3-dev] Zencart Extension

[Gene Rodrigues]

Sorry for the slow response.

My wife decided to spruce up my home office and hung up several plants from
the ceiling. She hung one over my monitor, and I did not think about it at
the time. Then she watered it, and it overflowed into the vents on top of my
monitor. I had to go out shopping for a new monitor before I could get back
online. It was a terrible start for a new week.

There were several reasons for choosing Zencart...

First, there are over 1,500 contributions on the osCommerce site and few of
them have ever made it into the core. Harald does take bits and pieces of
code from some contributions, but progress on the project has been slow
since last January. There have been several milestone releases, but the
changes were nominal. The Zencart team, on the other hand, seems more in
tune with their user audience and does try hard to add new features on a
regular basis. Also, a good part of the core team left the project over the
past six months because they were disappointed with progress on the project.
Three of them are on the Zencart team.

Second, Mambo 5.0 is fully XHTML/CSS compliant. Zencart has the same goal.

Third, Zencart used BTS (Basic Template Structure) as the basis for there
existing template system. This separates php and javascript from html,
making it easier to build an extension (component in Mambo lingo). Although
the files are located all over the place within the confines of the Zencart
directory structure, they do form the nucleus of separate modules. With some
minor changes to the directory structure, its possible to simplify it
greatly and place it in a form where users can easily relate the new
directory structure to TYPO3, Mambo or any other CMS.

Fourth, I also build standalone e-commerce sites. Most customers prefer to
see selected contributions added to the core file set to expand it. Zencart
includes all of the frequently asked contributions, as well as a lot of new
improvements not available in the contributions library. For example, it
includes Chandra Roukema's contributions for adding text fields, checkboxes,
radio, buttons, file upload elements, etc., plus extensions added by the
Zencart team. I generally go through the laborious task of adding a set of
contributions to each new release of osCommerce. It made a lot of sense to
use Zencart instead to avoid that work.

Fifth, I asked a lot of questions up front before deciding to use Zencart.
Ian Wilson does want to move Zencart to OOP in 2.0. It's just a mystery at
this point as to how he plans to do it. The use of ADODB was another
consideration, although they are replacing it with another abstraction
library in 1.2.

Sixth, I like the clever way they allow new contributions to be absorbed
into the core by enumerating the contents of selected directories. We do
this a lot in Mambo, so the approach was easy to relate to. I hope to see
them improve and refine this approach until it's possible to add new classes
to expand the core on-the-fly.

Regarding WACT, I have been experimenting with WACT and Mojavi. I have also
been experimenting with Interakt's Krysalis platform which was based on
Cocoon. Generally, I like the concept of using action chains to build pages.
One of these days, I plan to build a e-commerce application from scratch
based on one of these libraries. Storing content in XML and using XSLT to
transform it is a better way to go. It's a bit slow at this point, but I'm
sure that caching schemes will arrive on the scene to speed up the process.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gabriel Anast" <gabriel at anast.org>
Newsgroups: typo3.projects.oscommerce
To: "Gene Rodrigues" <mediamechanix at verizon.net>; "List for Core-/Extension
development" <typo3-dev at lists.netfielders.de>
Sent: Tuesday, April 06, 2004 2:14 PM
Subject: Re: [Typo3-dev] Zencart Extension


> Gene--
>
> > I am not sure if this is a good place to collaborate on the Zencart
> > extension.
>
> no, please keep all discussion online... we've had too much offline
> already! You can also post to typo3.projects.oscommerce or to typosc.com
> (I will post this reply there as well)
>
> Let me add that John Cox has Zen-Cart run through xref here:
>
> http://www.wyome.com/zen
>
> and I think that osCommerce is here:
>
> http://www.oscdox.com/crossx
>
> (completely off topic, but have you ever seen WACT... pretty cool
> software... PHP views or patterns builder. I saw it while looking for
> the osC xRef)
>
> An important topic that you might start with is why you lean toward
> zen-cart. We are currently leaning toward osCommerce... enlighten us.
>
> --gabe
>
>
>
>
>
>
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