Phew Aharon, many questions... Did you take a closer look at zope.org? I think many questions are answered within the site. But let's get going...
1) Could Zope help me keep track of who is reading what and match people up for discussion?
You could track down people with cookies :-( or sessions :-) Both can be achieved with zope. I'd go for sessions - though I am not a programmer. From what I know and what I think your idea is aiming to sessions would help you to set up framework powerfull enough to reach your goals. Besides how to you deal with people who won't allow cookies? Then you could analyse the informatios gathered within the sessions and provide a "People who read this, also read that" ;-)
2) Could Zope help me personalize the fonts and other display settings for each user? How about letting users create their own bookmarks within the texts?
As for the bookmarks I don't know, but the fonts etc. could be done with 'skins'. I've seen a project on zope.org that promoted such functions. See also <http://www.zope.org/Members/hellmann/Chameleon/Chameleon-How-To>
3) Could Zope help me manage user created content and the relations between content and its creators?
yupp.
4) Could Zope handle right to left text and non-Latin character sets?
Is that a job for zope? To me this seems to be a Browsers job e.g. <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-5"> in the <head> section of the HTML that is sent to the Browser. Or am I missing something?
5) What are the advantages/disadvantages to developing this site with Zope as opposed to MySQL and PHP?
I can't comment on that, since I am not a programmer. For me it's a elaborated framework that provides functions needed for managing content e.g. versions, authentification ;-) etc. Get a closer insight at <http://www.zope.org/Tour/ar01.html> AFAIK you'd have to develop these basic functions from scratch if you use plain MySQL and PHP.
6) Could Zope help me make the same content available to ordinary web browsers and wireless devices in different formats?
Are you after WAP? There is code that does that... <http://www.zope.org/Members/Duncan/wap_howto> and then there's XML... :-)
7) Since we are going to be having discussion, we might want to stream voice between users and also stream pre-recorded voice. Any support for that?
Hmmm, do you mean something like 'Zope Streaming Server' AFAIK I haven't read about that... But why stream this from zope? There are other servers that are spezialised on that. I'd use a combination; zope as a frontend to provide the paths and the specific information bound to the stream
8) Where can I find speed benchmark information about Zope?
What is it that you want to measure? Anyway: There was a benchmark a while ago in the news. I couldn't find it immediately which doesn't mean it's not there...
9) Where can I find virtual server and collocation hosting for my site if I want to use zope, or do I have to administrate my own server?
<http://www.zope.org/Resources/ZSP> But let's think of your projects requirements first. What would you need to get the baby of the ground? Developing 1. If you use zope you will need zope :-| 2. You will have to develop a few Zope Products by yourself, either to implement features that aren't there yet or to customize and mingle other Products. That means you will need to have shell access to the machine you build your site on. 3. You will need at least ftp-access to your zope-dir in order to implement the new products. If you use only one machine, which I do not recommend, you are done with 2.) 4. ZODB (the Database zope runs on...) is a good database. Still many developers have their reasons to use a second DB mostly a relational Database e.g. Oracle or MySQL Serving 1. If your site hits the net and is a hit, you'll probably need: bandwidth and response time are needed. Reasonably for serving that starts from 2Mbps upwards. 2. If you go for ISPs they provide both: bandwitdh and short response times. Furthermore the offer features as backup (who does it regularly???) and probably better firewalling that you can do at your own. If you decide to take care of that by yourself, you will have to take care not only of the development but also of the above mentioned features plus a few more. Also if you want to stream media you'd be off good if you have a streaming proxy in order to take load of the machine that runs the server, when the going gets tough. Streaming proxys aren't cheap. ISPs can provide you with a solution that will serve not only your domain but also others. That makes it a lot cheaper and again you won't have to deal with the Streaming Proxy. So lets see, what I would do: I'd get two machines (bid + medium) that run the same OS; preferably Linux since it's cheap and there are enough people out there by now who really now their way around that OS. OTOH you'd should decide where to go first and decide on the ressources after that. I'd get an ISP that houses my big machine. Use the other machine to develop the project on. by, p@rick