So in the next version of the printed book there would be a cd packed with code-examples ,-)
I'm not sure if you've seen it, but the newest Zopes ship with an Examples folder that contains some simple example applications. They're not "real world" apps because they're very simple, but they should get folks "up and going". Maybe there needs to be a Zope Book chapter that explains the examples in the Examples folder.
What is the status of Zope Help-files - and what is going to happen with them?
They continue to be updated every release. The help system implementation might change, but the content will stay the same (or hopefully be improved). Currently the API reference in the Zope Book is generated right from the help files, but it may make sense to make a different book (API reference or something) out of it to give it more exposure.
Yes. I remember some time seen some proposition about rating system for zope.org products. That would be nice, since peers would be able to rate and comment on products. Also the feature to send comments to the maker -- and also on the product page, would be nice. Meaning that if there is a product which looks in words good, but in reality is buggy crap, and the writer is long gone.. for example changed company and email address etc.. users could write comments about their luck with product / howto - etc.
Yes, parts of this exist in new.zope.org. I'm not sure that helps a lot, though. ;-)
Yes. What is your feeling about including examples of using outside products for Zope in these new chapters. For example I am a small fan of the exUserFolder product for providing authentication against postgresql . I wouldnät mind teaming up with some other people and writing a document about the whole exUserFolder as an example...
I think it'd be a pretty big promise for us (Zope Corp) to make a committment to keep chapters devoted to non-Zope-core products up-to-date, so it'd be a little tough to consider putting them in the Zope Book and DevGuide. But I think whole "mini-books" could be devoted to topics like exUserFolder and LocalFS. I'm not sure what form these should be in, but I'm sort of partial to BackTalk for booklike content, and I believe that it's possible for "normal" members to create BackTalk Books on Zope.org, so folks can certainly make use of that if they want to create booklike content. Then again, a HowTo is fine as well. It would just be another document that we needed to review when we did a brute-force review of documentation available on Zope.org. ;-) Our community-contributed documentation management system needs to be simplified and normalized but I know that I can't bite that task off at the moment while I'm concentrating on getting the "official" docs in order. I'm guardedly hopeful somebody will kickstart new.zope.org in the meantime, which might solve a few of the associated problems for us.
Well how about if now for starters we would continue discussion on the mailinglist and then you could open a Zwiki-page somewhere, where we all could start the work on these guidelines.
OK, I took you up on that and I've revived the Documentation Wiki at http://www.zope.org/Wikis/Docs. You need to be logged in to edit. Note that there is already a *lot* of guideline documentation at http://www.zope.org/DocProjects/ (some of which may be outdated), so you should probably look at that before reinventing anything. Thanks a lot! -- Chris McDonough Zope Corporation http://www.zope.org http://www.zope.com "Killing hundreds of birds with thousands of stones"