I've been diving into some Zope lately, mostly via discovery of the Squishdot product, and have been facing the usual glee and frustration of discovering a new, cool product. Zope, as an environmnet, is definitely cool, and has a lot of potential to aid in quick Web Application deploymen. There also seems to be a healthy amount of enthusiasm, judging by the new Products that keep getting added to the Products list. Ironically, it is this Product list which is also the source of my biggest gripe, which is, in essence, a decisive lack of proper documentation for most of the products - and it seems that documnetation is a big weak point of the whole Zope environment at this stage. Yeah, I know about the ZDP, and the HOWTOs, but they all deal with Zope, not the specific products. Let me illustrate with a list of the specific products I've been playing with so far, and the relative troubles I've been having. ZOPE: Thanks to Jeff Rush's RPMs, installation was a snap, and took a whole of 10 minutes to get started. Getting Zope to work with PCGI/Apache took a bit longer, but Jeff has been very helpful, and very patient in helping me get the system configured. He should also be commended for his very detailed documentation and helpfiles on his site. NotMail: No instructions on the Zope products page, no instructions on how to use once installed. No instructions on how to access and/or customize. It's installed, sure, but that's about it. Any additional information I had to literally hunt down, finding outdated links, and not a single reference to a working, installed product. Wrote to the author, and have recived no response. I've pretty much given up on this one TinyTable: Installed like a charm, mostly since besides the intial untaring of the package, nothing else needed to be done. Squishdot: Installed easily. Works. Customization and configuration was a bit tricky, but greatly assisted by help from the author, Bruce Perens, and the various documentation documents on the test site. This one is working, and I'm making great progress on using it as the underlying engine for a project I'm working on. ZpdfDocument: Looks like a Product that might allow to export pages in pdf format. That's actually what it is, after unpacking and reading the README.html file, but since the product page contains no information about the functionality, installation, or installation I really haven't installed it yet. Fortune Product : Great little product. Installed. Added the tag to replace static quote, and it worked right out of the box. Since there are no configurations or syntax issues, this is appropriate. Poll 0.6.4: Got it to install, yet it requires the PIL, which the Zope product page did not explain (something that the README file explained, which the author agreed he will place on-line). Unfortunately, PIL requires additional libraries, which, although present ona RedHat linux system, aren't where PIL expects them to be. So, because of this, while the Poll product is now installed, I don't have graphics capabilities, since I gave up on trying to hunt down nested dependent libraries. Chameleon: Haven't tried installing it yet, but Doug has provided EXEMPLARY documentation and installation instructions. Not only does this product address a need, but I am actually motivated to try installation, simply because of the documentation provided. ZCounter: An extremely simple product, with, again, nice and detailed instructions regarding syntax. A candidate for installation right there. In summary, here's the suggestion on how to make the environment less daunting to newbies, and how to make the Zope experience, in general, a more pleasant one - danger: this would require some minimal effort on the part of authors, but it will pay off, in the end, by a reduction in the number of support request and 'help' e-mails you receive that you can be happy to ignore: * Include the README file of your product on the Zope Product page for your product. * Including listings of dependent libraries, or products, with links to them. * include syntax examples * include installation instructions (even if you think they are self-evident). * include a link to a site that actually uses the product, so users can see the product in action (I am fascinated by the fact that, apparently, NONE of the products exhibited have found ANY use in the public areas... Seriously, it might be useful for Zope.ORG to provide an area where the product can be shown off.) With the addition of the above, the Zope experience could be enhanced ten-fold for potential zopistas. Harry