Is the 4.5 cms still active? Will etp be *the* cms for 4.5?
4.5 CMS has a ton of useful code in it coupled with incomplete integration into the [Open]ACS framework and a UI that turns everyone off. By "incomplete integration" I mean it there are a lot of rough corners in the integration (the CMS started life as an independent application and aD tried to integrate it later). Things like its own login mechanism that only works with your "screen name" which isn't required of you at the OpenACS registration end of things, the fact that the CMS code thinks it owns everything in the Content Repository. Means you can't effectively multimount it among other things, and it exposes everything from bookmarks to file storage through its UI, which is confusing.
ETP is better integrated and I think (hope?) that ETP2 will try to use more of the existing CMS code (much which is excellent) rather than roll its own.
I do think we need a more complete CMS solution than the ETP style, though ETP is a great way to put up a lot of templated information in a hurry.
Unknown to most people, I think, is that the CMS UI actually allows you to define custom content types and tie form widgets to them, allows you to attach arbitrary templates to content types or indidivual content items, etc etc. To be honest I think the CMS lets you do everything ETP does (and I know in many ways it does a lot more) ... it's just that ETP has a very straightforward and simple UI.
When 4.6 is on a roll and people are ready to talk about 4.7, we should get a subgroup underway to study CMS issues. Something you ask , "what are the most important features a CMS must provide?", would be a good planning point. Along with study of the CCM since it's now under a standard RH open source license, and maybe one or two more of the other OSS solutions Jun mentions. Not for the internals (we're in pretty good shape in that regard) but for UI, for notions of what gets exposed to various content providers, etc.
Anyway it looks like interest in CMS issues is growing again and a subgroup to explore them would be good. In a way ETP2 folk are focused on this, but they're focused more on one particular solution rather than starting from first principles, i.e. "what should a CMS look like to editors, writers etc?"
