It is true. A really wicked and powerful web application server. No doubt about that. Zope for dummies (a book or something similar, not Zope lite version :0)..for beginner (not always for beginner developer)..especially for Windows based developers (A lot of them here, too many to be ignored if we are talking about market share)-ASP,CF etc..And an awful lots of company uses ASP (free and Microsoft) for Intranet..And if you've known just VBScript, you'd think Zope is only for rocket scientist. And students as well very important, because many would use just the awful Perl for CGI processing..(Perl is almost a standard in many unis). 'Dummies' are the majorities, and I think its Zope's best interest to lure them. This is we want more people to use Zope. The best product doesn't always equate to market share. The one that people can use and understand will (doesn't apply to Microsoft:O).. My point still is the good ol' documentations for beginners the way to go, if we are talking about increasing market share. Let's do something about it. Dody Martijn Pieters wrote:
Much of the documentation is designed with *advance* developers in mind. It's time for Zope for Dummies.
Dody
What many people forget here is that Zope is a Web Application Platform. It is, first and foremost, designed as a framework for applications.
All the DTML Methods and Folder objects and whatnot, are standard objects to help you design an interface, they are part of and build upon the Zope framework. Together with the ZODB, security, the web interface, the marshalling of variable types and RDBMS integration, Zope makes one heck of a Web Application Platform.
Zope was designed for Web Application Developers, not designers. The documentation follows this design. I actually feel that dummies should stay away from Zope. Frontpage is for dummies.
As far as DTML editing goes: DTML was designed to put a face on the application, not so much as to be used on its own. DTML is very powerful for this, but its features also make it unsuitable for WISYWIG editing.
-- Martijn Pieters, Web Developer | Antraciet http://www.antraciet.nl | Tel: +31-35-7502100 Fax: +31-35-7502111 | mailto:mj@antraciet.nl http://www.antraciet.nl/~mj | PGP: http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8A32149 ------------------------------------------