ATRepresentations is a Zope product meant to extend Archetypes. Archetypes
content types setup with ATRepresentations are extended in two directions.

* They are representations aware : different variations of the same content
are stored in different content type instances that know of each other.
Links can be followed from one representation to another representation of 
the same content. 

* They can define representation independent fields : when those fields
are edited on one of the representations among a set, the new value is set on
all representations. This mechanism is in contrast to the standard Archetypes
fields which have different values on each representation of the set.


IMPORTANT

We want to thank PloneSolutions, author of LinguaPlone to have let us steal
their code.

Without LinguaPlone, this would not exist !


Benefits of ATRepresentations

  - representation management is integrated in the Plone UI

  - Totally transparent, install-and-go.

  - Each representation is a discrete object, and can be workflowed individually.

  - This also means that it works with WebDAV and FTP.

  - Representations are kept track of using AT references.

  - You can multi-representation-enable your types without affecting their
    operation outside ATRepresentations.

  - Even if you uninstall ATRepresentations after adding multi representation 
    content, all your content will be intact and will work as separate objects!
    The only thing that will be inactive is the references between the objects.
    If you re-install it, they will be back. It's very non-intrusive.

  - Supporting multi representation capabilities is a 4 (!) line addition to
    your Archetypes class, and does not alter the functionality of the class
    when used outside ATRepresentations.

  - Fully integrated with ATContentTypes, so the basic content (iow not
    folderish) types are representable.

  - Supports representation-independent fields (example: Title, Description)
    for fields you want to be the same across representations, and updated in
    all representations if one of them changes.

  - Uses the notion of Canonical representation, so you can do interesting things
    with workflow, like retract all representations of a video when the master copy has changed.

Dependencies

  Requires:

  - Archetypes 1.3 branch from the SVN - the 1.3b2 release is not sufficient. 

  - Plone 2.0.3 or up