A shopping spree at the local bookstore does little good if none of the documentation for Zope is available at the local bookstore....
What I meant about the books is that there are at least 4 Python books and countless Unix, Apache etc, books that will help in any Zope installation (good to know more than just the Zope part).
Ah! Understood. Although books on UNIX don't interest me in the slightest (seeing as I escaped from the UNIX jail a long time ago), a good book on Apache is quite definitely worth my while. (I practically *BREATHE* Python these days, so the Python books aren't quite as useful to me....:-)
This also goes for most Open Source software products I have played with. Very basic, very crude, very matter-of-fact documentation for the beginner.
Agreed. Open Source documentation seems to be by geeks for geeks, and specifically for geeks who think that firing up a debugger is the best way to get program documentation. Personally I'm more task and tool oriented. I have a task, I want to use a tool to accomplish this task. I don't want to have to wrestle with the tool (or the tool's documentation) before I wrestle with the task. For that reason and primarily for that reason I've not had much use for Open Source (or other free) software. Python is a notable exception -- it's so cleanly designed that the occasional hole in the documentation doesn't bug me as much. Zope is another exception. Its documentation is miserable, but it is such a powerful product that I'm willing to wrestle with it (although I'm not happy about it).
Zope will get better, we will help.
If I didn't think so, I'd have ditched Zope like I ditched most Open Source software I've evaluated. Instead I'm lurking in the Zope mailing list until I get my Z legs and can contribute.