Here's my vision for where OpenACS will be in a couple of years:
First of all, it will be extremely easy to start up and test it out. Perhaps Debian packages, or a series of scripts that can be run. Someone should be able to install it in 5 minutes or less, or that should be our goal.
Second, I imagine it will be much easier to create packages in the future. The way I imagine it is:
You create the datamodel. In the data model, you lay out enough meta-data that you can get these pages for free, by just copying a standard package template:
- a list page (based on list-builder), with pagination.
- a view page, which simply lists each item, and has links to edit and delete pages. It also optionally allows you to view all the revisions of that item in a simple format.
- a delete page, which deletes that item.
- an edit page, based on ad_form, which automatically generated the form for you based on the meta-data of the data model.
Really, this vision is not that far off. It just takes another 5% to put everything together. I think that's the direction we're going, too. 😊
I also would like to see some work on making ad_form work better with multiple items.
A couple years further down the road, we could use the content repository to create the data model through the UI, and do all of the above as well. You would really have to program anything at all, except for customization, and optimization of queries and more complex applications.
