[z3] Guidance on potential Z3 project...

[Daniel]

Hi,

I'm interested in working on a contributory project within the ZopeX3
framework, but would welcome guidance as well as ideas as to its
feasability.  My motivation is both to use this as an exercise to teach
myself ZopeX3 and to provide a very necessary package for the larger
community.  While I have not created packages for ZopeX3 or products
for Zope2 before, I have played around with Zope2 for a bit, and have a
background in coding and scripting as a computational physicist (grad
student).  I have a good deal of free time over the next three months
(by horizon for completion of any project of this type that I start),
though my internet connection is tenuous, such that I won't often be
able to use online resource and references while working on it, but
should get connected once a day or so.

I'm interested in bringing ecommerce / shopping cart functionality to
ZopeX3, somewhat similar to that provided by the successful PHP-based
OSCommerce product (GPL-d, available at www.oscommerce.org).  I know of
some extant Zope-based shopping cart packages, the most prominent
probably being ZWarehouse and PloneMall (CMFCommerce appears
abandoned), but all run under Zope2 and use its technological
foundations, and neither provide as much out of the box functionality
or ease-of-configuration as OSCommerce, to speed adoption in the wider
community. 

So, I also know that there has been repeated requests on the z3-dev
mailing list for creation of some form of "Petstore"-like ZopeX3
package to showcase the Z3 functionality, and I imagine this might tie
into that interest.

What am I asking for, then, right now?

1. Some form of feasability analysis as to whether 3 months of daily
coding (assume 6 hours or so a day) would be sufficient to tackle this
type of project, if I'm coming from a position of not having worked
with Z3 before (but otherwise a competent programmer).

2. Some possible offer of future handholding to point me in the right
direction and help shape the overall framework of the project.  (I'm
working through the Stephan Richter's Z3 book right now, and envision
this type of help to involve something like:  "Hey, look at events and
subscribers for that, or use XML-RPC here, etc...)

3. Some idea as to whether others are interested in this project, and
if any folks might want to help lend a hand on a much more limited time
basis than I.

Thanks for the help, and best wishes,
Daniel