Is there any zope cannonical collection of whats useful/used in zope development, and what is not?

I have a product I’m thiking of working on and I was looking at Zpatterns and thought, “Hey this sounds neat”. Then I Thought “This doesn’t look like its been updated in a few months, and the zope book only briefly mentions it’s existance, does this mean I should think about using it, or that it’s been enveloped by another project/product I should use instead, or that It’s useless and dead?”

Now I am suffering from i-bet-everyone-knows-the-answer-but-me-itis. “Does the whole zope community either no this is a dead end or that it’s ‘like the ONLY’ starting point for a project like mine”.

Why should I re-invent the wheel when someone else has done the work for me? But at the moment I can’t seem to find a way to tell square wheels from round ones.

I know there is not only one way to do something in zope, but there are bad ways and better ways. Instead of asking specifically about Zpatterns I’ll ask about products in general, how (without simply knowing before hand and working for d.c) do I know what is a good or bad starting place for a project.

-Dan Narkiewicz