On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Paul Everitt wrote: I'll jump in, since this is an issue I worry about w.r.t Zope's success well for places I know, such as university departments where faculty, not hackers, do web page editing and e.g. my organization, where I want e.g. the HR manager to be able to edit the web pages and blissfully ignore all of the cool Zope features that the webmaster really likes...
I certainly agree. We have spent a lot of time over the last month thinking about an IDE. The direction that we are going is:
o choose an IDE strategy that reinforces Open Source, rather than attempt to annoint a proprietary tool like CF Studio
o base the IDE strategy on advanced standards (HTML4, CSS2, DOM, XML, RDF, and WebDAV)
It appears that I'll have more to say on this in about a month. Other efforts, such as integrating PythonWorks from Pythonware, are feasible as well.
All sounds fine, of course. It does sound distant -- which is fine in the long term, but worrisome in the short term. I don't know of a single WebDAV client I can play with, let alone a full-featured WebDAV-aware HTML editor.
If someone has Linux on their desktop, how do they manage CF sites?
Irrelevant if your shop (as mine does) has a single Linux box as the server, and oodles of macs and PC's on desktops.
Let me ask a question that tries to quantify the situation. IMO, the current Zope IDE is pretty unproductive. On a scale of 1 to 100, its *productivity* level is about a 5 compared to NetObjects Fusion, Dreamweaver, etc. On other factors it shines -- it is based on standards, is completely portable, source code is available, is mind-numbingly easy to modify the IDE, etc.
Just for argument, let's say that CF Studio is a 90. If we came out with an improved IDE that retained the factors listed above that CF Studio fails at, what number would it need to move up to for you to give an unqualified "Yes!" ??
In our case, I suspect, a 20 or 30 would be enough. What's most important is, I think: - a GUI for the 95% of the web page editing tasks (a-la Netscape Composer, Frontpage, etc.). - a clean, robust, and simple interaction between the user (someone who does not want to learn HTML but wants to manage their web page nonetheless) and the "web server" -- Zope in this case.
If *we* is your shop, how about...XEmacs? Using ZServer to publish your object system by HTTP, you can be *significantly* more productive:
Again, emacs is irrelevant for my HR manager, who'd quit if she was told she had to learn it (and, I dare say, she'd be right =). It *could* be that Netscape Composer is the answer for my shop -- I haven't tried it with the FTP-enabled Zope.
It would still be missing a *whole* lot of things vs. CF Studio, such as link checkers, a list of variables that can be inserted, syntax colorization of the markup, etc. Let's say it moved up to a 25.
From the perspective of someone who wants to use tools and not hack code, emacs is useless. The folks I'm trying to convince rave about GoLive or whatever it's called. I looked at it and couldn't get it to manage Zope pages, but that could be me.
So, as a summary: - emacs is fine for folks that already use emacs, but... - emacs is not an HTML-editing tool. It's a swiss-army chainsaw, as we all know. (Besides, what about the vi shops? =)) - I think Zope is an easy sell to webmasters who think ahead. - I think Zope is currently a hard sell to folks who like shrink-wrapped software with lots of buttons and gizmos and WYSIWYG. Trying to be helpful... --david PS: *I* use emacs all day long.