Implement new editing format/through-the-web site management?

[pugnatio2 at yahoo.com]

Hi,

I'm a Zope newbie but an experienced Python programmer. Could someone
suggest a general approach for the two parts below?

1) I'd like to build a system that stores XML documents in the ZODB
and allows them to be edited through the web in a new text format. The
format is similar to StructuredText and can be translated to XML and
vice versa, using Python methods.

2) The second part of system would be to maintain the site map as an
XML document, also in the ZODB, and allow it to be edited using a
tree-like HTML form or javascript interface, so that the structure of
the entire site could be managed interactively from a single page.
Elements in the site map XML would point to the IDs of XML objects
stored in the ZODB. These pointers could be moved around by editing
the site map. The Zope folder hierarchy would not drive the structure
of the site, the XML document would.

Is it a simple matter to override the editing interface to accomplish
(1)? And does (2) seem unnecessary, given Zope's virtual hierarchy of
objects and folders, which you get automatically? Being able to deal
with the entire site at a glance seemed advantageous to me.

I would prefer to use page templates, not DTML, if possible, and I'd
like to create a self-sufficient Zope product that can be installed
and used "out of the box" by anyone else.

Any tips/comments/flames would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,

--toby