The first steps to build your first Zope website often creates enough momentum to hinder the newbie from learning alternative approaches until much later. How many newbies think that the DTML_Document is that all powerful object because it is what is used in most examples with standard_html_header? And then proceed to create a website with 100% DTML_Documents, only to discover they have now defeated many benefits of acquisition and folders? And then you go back and convert everything to DTML_Methods with folders containing properties.
Note that this practice is explicitly denounced in the new Zope Book edition. As a matter of fact, I go so far as to say that people should probably *never* use a DTML Document. This is in the introduction to DTML.
When a newbie has a problem, the only choice is to search mail list archives and zope.org docs. But these are heavily laden with DTML references and can quickly send the newbie into the perception that DTML is everything in Zope, which just isn't the case anymore. I think it is a big mistake that the Zope Book consider p-scripts advanced. This should be considered a basic requirement for newbies.
Good point.
We almost need a community endorsed comparison of DTML, p-scripts, and external methods and python products and the suggested appropriate situations for each.
FWIW, I try to do this in the docs (see http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/BasicObj ect.stx).
How is that for trying to address both sides? The hard work is sitting down to create this document.
Weel, forgive me for having a one-track mind, but it's already in motion if you're willing to live within the constraints of the Zope Book. I think this is its main purpose, as folks need a sanity check when they first come in to Zope. The ZB can help to do this because it's highly organized, it has a controlled scope, and it has at least a little bit of momentum (FWIW, I have spent ~ 200 hours editing it for 2.6 and a few other people have contributed time and effort as well). NZO can help people *find* the Zope Book and other critical documents, help people make decisions about which third-party products are "good" and which are bad, and help folks better categorized HowTos, all of which are problems that need to be solved that are not even close to being solved by the current docset. - C