David wrote:

Paul mumbled: I'll jump in, since this is an issue I worry about w.r.t Zope's success well for places I know, such as university departments where faculty, not hackers, do web page editing and e.g. my organization, where I want e.g. the HR manager to be able to edit the web pages and blissfully ignore all of the cool Zope features that the webmaster really likes...

Is there are reason these folks can't use Netscape Composer? It doesn't sound like they would ever grok DTML...

All sounds fine, of course. It does sound distant -- which is fine in the long term, but worrisome in the short term. I don't know of a single WebDAV client I can play with, let alone a full-featured WebDAV-aware HTML editor.

That's true. If, however, Mozilla sprouted WebDAV capabilities in the next three months, is that near enough term?

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If someone has Linux on their desktop, how do they manage CF sites?

Irrelevant if your shop (as mine does) has a single Linux box as the server, and oodles of macs and PC's on desktops.

Correct. But I don't think Zope should pursue a direction that excludes platforms such as Linux.

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Let me ask a question that tries to quantify the situation. IMO, the current Zope IDE is pretty unproductive. On a scale of 1 to 100, its *productivity* level is about a 5 compared to NetObjects Fusion, Dreamweaver, etc. On other factors it shines -- it is based on standards, is completely portable, source code is available, is mind-numbingly easy to modify the IDE, etc.

Just for argument, let's say that CF Studio is a 90. If we came out with an improved IDE that retained the factors listed above that CF Studio fails at, what number would it need to move up to for you to give an unqualified "Yes!" ??

In our case, I suspect, a 20 or 30 would be enough. What's most important is, I think:

- a GUI for the 95% of the web page editing tasks (a-la Netscape Composer, Frontpage, etc.).

OK, fortunately Zope 1.10 appears to have solid Netscape Composer integration. FrontPage 2000 should be out within, say, four months, and (theoretically) we'll get that with WebDAV.

- a clean, robust, and simple interaction between the user (someone who does not want to learn HTML but wants to manage their web page nonetheless) and the "web server" -- Zope in this case.

OK, we have that with "Netscape Publishing" (HTTP PUT).

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If *we* is your shop, how about...XEmacs? Using ZServer to publish your object system by HTTP, you can be *significantly* more productive:

Again, emacs is irrelevant for my HR manager, who'd quit if she was told she had to learn it (and, I dare say, she'd be right =). It

But she would also quit if she had to learn ColdFusion Studio. You're mixing up the discussions -- Alan was asking about that comparison. I imagine he'd quit if he had to manage web sites using FrontPage :^)

*could* be that Netscape Composer is the answer for my shop -- I haven't tried it with the FTP-enabled Zope.

You don't need ZServer and FTP for it. Download Zope 1.10pr1 and use ZopeHTTPServer. It *appears* to work well, and works well with PCGI/Apache as well.

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It would still be missing a *whole* lot of things vs. CF Studio, such as link checkers, a list of variables that can be inserted, syntax colorization of the markup, etc. Let's say it moved up to a 25.

From the perspective of someone who wants to use tools and not hack code, emacs is useless. The folks I'm trying to convince rave

I agree that *content managers* won't adopt Emacs. However, *developers* such as Tom and Alan might find it a wildly productive environment.

about GoLive or whatever it's called. I looked at it and couldn't get it to manage Zope pages, but that could be me.

So, as a summary:

- emacs is fine for folks that already use emacs, but... - emacs is not an HTML-editing tool. It's a swiss-army chainsaw, as we all know. (Besides, what about the vi shops? =)) - I think Zope is an easy sell to webmasters who think ahead. - I think Zope is currently a hard sell to folks who like shrink-wrapped software with lots of buttons and gizmos and WYSIWYG.

Right. And Zope needs to be more productive for both content managers and developers. --Paul