savannah-hackers
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

[Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of catalog-display and o


From: dotgnu
Subject: [Savannah-hackers] savannah.gnu.org: submission of catalog-display and order-taking tool
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 20:22:30 -0500

A package was submitted to savannah.gnu.org.
This mail was sent to address@hidden, address@hidden


david nicol <address@hidden> described the package as follows:
License: gpl
Other License: 
Package: catalog-display and order-taking tool
System name: cashbox
This package wants to apply for inclusion in the GNU project


The product will be a ready-to-go catalog/basket/order-taking
system.  It has been discussed with Norbert Bollow in regard
to inclusion in the DotGNU suite or bundle.

User Roles:

        Owner: owner of the store

        Customer: views catalog, hopefully will purchase, can hold
                in-store credit

        Admin: person responsible for helping owner with their
           web site (or dotgnu box... this is a stand-alone
           product as well as a dotgnu product)

        Employee: people designated by the owner with limited
           authority, such as editing product descriptions
           or accessing customer records, on a per-each basis


Cashbox will have a revolutionarly simple installation phase:  you 
place the deliverable in a writable cgi-enabled directory and look
at it with a web browser and it interviews you and sets itself
up (into a default configuraiton) accordingly.  It will find the
sendmail executable or ask for the local SMTP server to open channels
with directly for outgoing SMTP purposes.  GPG support will not be
in initial release but initial developers will try to leave space
for the patch.

It is entirely written in perl, for the moment at least.
Automated perl->whatever translators are on the horizon, FWTW.

administrative tools are provided for interactive html-uploading
of item graphics to catalog pages, and editing the text and prices
listed on catalog pages, instead of requiring store-owners to master 
file transfer protocol 

all displayed and mailed pages are based on HTML template files, for
ease of modification by owner or owner-employees

At shopping cart checkout time, the cart is transformed into an order
which can be associated with a variety of offered payment systems and
then gets e-mailed to the owner or their order department.

customer accounts maintained with per-customer statistics and logs
(which could get kind of spooky, or maybe not -- amazon keeps
pretty good logs of what you look at so it can present you with
similar things, that kind of feature needs some data collected
for it somehow)

the ability to transfer in-store credit from one customer to another,
done by the customer (cashbox\'s tipjar.com heritage shows through) for
arbitrary purposes such as \"gift certificates\" and promotional offers
and coupons: cashbox will not (by default, in initial release) 
contain code for arranging tight binding between an identity and a
generally offered coupon.  Rather, in-store credit at a cashbox merchant 
becomes a currency, transferable arbitrarily via assignment
to another e-mail address or via association with a certificate.

Thusly, when greencricketpottery.com gets their cashbox server
running, a worldwide currency based on the fundament of the
deluxe yard gnome may spring into existence.  Or, cashbox merchants
can just do all their in-store credit in money, in which case
cashbox can handle refunds via configurable methods.

It is conceivable that inter-cashbox communications could be
standardized to the point of implementing automated futures markets
or any other piece of \"B2B\" conceptualization.





reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]