RE: [Zope] (Fwd) Zope musings
Tom Jenkins writes:
Hi folks, We're in the process of evaluating Zope and Cold Fusion. I'm the resident Open Source advocate <g>, so I'd like to make sure that Zope has all its benefits given its due.
We're, (well actually Alan is), working on a contract where the client requested Cold Fusion so he has some direct experience. We installed Principia back in December and actually are testing it for another client, but haven't spent much time with it unfortunately.
Alan has brought up some usage concerns of his and I hope someone on the list could respond. Please don't think that Alan is against the product; no in fact he is very interested in it but is just unsure of the tools available to help do good work.
Understood. And thanks for sharing the points with the community.
------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 10:08:00 -0500 To: TomJenkins@zentuit.com From: Alan Johnston <flames direct to me, please [g]> Subject: Zope musings
I don't know why I didn't think of this before. As you can tell from earlier comments, I like Cold Fusion studio, the IDE which allows you to control web page, database, query, and site management all in one window. It is a very slick way to create web pages in general, whether or not they include CF tags and CF queries.
Tis true. On the other hand, only developers can use CF Studio, unless you plan to plop down several thousand dollars, ship it to you customers, and then train them on it. Put another way: what if someone outside the company wanted to change a ColdFusion page? What would be their IDE?
But there's no reason you couldn't also use CF Studio to develop Zope/DTML pages. You would have to save your pages on a local drive and use Zope's
Don't suppose CF supports any standards, like saving to an FTP site or publishing using HTTP PUT? (Note that Zope's FTP support should be solid within a month.)
Upload feature to publish them. But that's a fairly small price in inconvenience. Anyway, the lack of a nice, user-friendly interface for web page creation is the one klunky thing about Zope (Principia) at our site.
I certainly agree. We have spent a lot of time over the last month thinking about an IDE. The direction that we are going is: o choose an IDE strategy that reinforces Open Source, rather than attempt to annoint a proprietary tool like CF Studio o base the IDE strategy on advanced standards (HTML4, CSS2, DOM, XML, RDF, and WebDAV) It appears that I'll have more to say on this in about a month. Other efforts, such as integrating PythonWorks from Pythonware, are feasible as well.
Typing angle brackets and obscure HTML tags into your browser is a fun way to astound and impress your non-HTML-literate friends, but I wouldn't have wanted to make a Georgetown/CASS questionnaire system that way. And, again, trying to use Netscape Composer, as recommended in the Principia docs is a sub-par solution. So this is really the one (only?) area I've seen so far where CF is way ahead Zope.
If someone has Linux on their desktop, how do they manage CF sites? 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!" ??
So if we want to use Zope for real-world tasks, one important need in the near term is to find a better way to do actual web page/HTML
If *we* is your shop, how about...XEmacs? Using ZServer to publish your object system by HTTP, you can be *significantly* more productive: o fantastic editor that now runs deliciously on Windows o bulk copy from/to the local machine o all the ediff capabilities you could dream up o html-mode, etc. o using W3 in XEmacs, access to things like setting properties and undo 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. --Paul Paul Everitt Digital Creations paul@digicool.com 540.371.6909
On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, Paul Everitt wrote: 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...
I certainly agree. We have spent a lot of time over the last month thinking about an IDE. The direction that we are going is:
o choose an IDE strategy that reinforces Open Source, rather than attempt to annoint a proprietary tool like CF Studio
o base the IDE strategy on advanced standards (HTML4, CSS2, DOM, XML, RDF, and WebDAV)
It appears that I'll have more to say on this in about a month. Other efforts, such as integrating PythonWorks from Pythonware, are feasible as well.
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.
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.
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.). - 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.
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 *could* be that Netscape Composer is the answer for my shop -- I haven't tried it with the FTP-enabled Zope.
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 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. Trying to be helpful... --david PS: *I* use emacs all day long.
David Ascher wrote:
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...
I'm planning to use Zope at a university department and thinking hard about how to use Zope to make editing content (especially text) *really* easy for these people. The previous set of webpages hasn't been updated since 1997 or so, and then barely so, so it has got to be trivial. The solution I'm thinking about revolves around Structured Text and a trick I got working today (see my post about role information for more info). My idea is quite simple; a typical web page consists of content and layout (of course there's overlap). The layout is designed by someone who's HTML savvy. Wherever there's editable content, this person leaves a tag like <!--#var "editable(some_id)"-->. 'editable' is an external method which does different things based on what role you have. If you're role anonymous, it just passes the text document associated with some_id through structured text, and displays it. If you're role 'editor' (or manager or whatever) it does the same, but it prepends a hyperlink. Clicking the hyperlink gets you into a very simple textarea form, where you can enter structured text and press 'change' and you're done updating the web page. You turn into 'editor' by logging into a special page (just like logging into the management screen makes you manager). This is about as trivial as it can get. There's not much freedom, but the people we're talking about aren't too concerned about freedom and flexibility (that's possibly why Microsoft is so successful :). [emacs discussion snipped :)] Uses-emacs-all-day-long-too-ly yours, Martijn
On Wed, 17 Feb 1999, David Ascher wrote: <snip>
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.).
Oh God, I can't belive I'm about to suggest this but... How hard would it be to support the frontpage extensions through Zope? (I feel so dirty) Unfortunatly some of our clients use frontpage. Which at the moment keeps me from moving them into Zope.
- 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.
--------------------------------------------------- - Scott Robertson Phone: 714.972.2299 - - CodeIt Computing Fax: 714.972.2399 - - http://codeit.com - ---------------------------------------------------
Scott Robertson wrote:
Oh God, I can't belive I'm about to suggest this but... How hard would it
You need a refresher course at the Reeducation Center :^)
be to support the frontpage extensions through Zope? (I feel so dirty) Unfortunatly some of our clients use frontpage. Which at the moment keeps me from moving them into Zope.
Last I looked into this, MS provides only binary extensions to integrate with the web server. It really isn't possible to integrate it into Zope -- it specifically diddles files on the filesystem through a CGI script. --Paul
On 18 Feb 99, at 7:20, Paul Everitt wrote:
be to support the frontpage extensions through Zope? (I feel so dirty) Unfortunatly some of our clients use frontpage. Which at the moment keeps me from moving them into Zope.
Last I looked into this, MS provides only binary extensions to integrate with the web server. It really isn't possible to integrate it into Zope -- it specifically diddles files on the filesystem through a CGI script.
I contacted MS about us adding fpage extensions to Novell's web server. Funny thing, they said "no help from us!". Actually, what they said was that a 3rd party owns all the rights to the extensions and that I would have to contact them about it. I didn't bother. Fpage extensions would be handy, except that: 1. fpage still doesn't know dhtml 2. you got to have windows as your client. Brad Clements, bkc@murkworks.com (315)268-1000 http://www.murkworks.com (315)268-9812 Fax netmeeting: ils://ils.murkworks.com ICQ: 14856937
At 15:58 18/02/99 , you wrote:
On 18 Feb 99, at 7:20, Paul Everitt wrote:
be to support the frontpage extensions through Zope? (I feel so dirty) Unfortunatly some of our clients use frontpage. Which at the moment keeps me from moving them into Zope.
Last I looked into this, MS provides only binary extensions to integrate with the web server. It really isn't possible to integrate it into Zope -- it specifically diddles files on the filesystem through a CGI script.
I contacted MS about us adding fpage extensions to Novell's web server. Funny thing, they said "no help from us!".
Actually, what they said was that a 3rd party owns all the rights to the extensions and that I would have to contact them about it. I didn't bother.
Fpage extensions would be handy, except that:
1. fpage still doesn't know dhtml 2. you got to have windows as your client.
I know FP is Win only, but it's about clients that want to be able to easily access their website to do content management. These clients are usually secretaries on Windows machines, and FP is a nice MS Office like tool. I used it with a lot of server side ASP and COM coding to allow clients do some pretty slick WYSIWYG content management. Just don't try to give a client two different passwords with each a different set of access rights. The FP client has some nice additions (like the webbot tag), that make it possible to add DTML code to a page, have FP render it, but not touch it, allowing the user to edit everything that's not DTML. Then ,when the page is uploaded again, the webbot tag is ignored by the server, but the code it hid isn't... Implementing FP server extension support could be done by analyzing the traffic to and from a server with the extensions installed. Question is if anyone wants to do all that work, and if we are allowed to (license problems). -- M.J. Pieters, Web Developer | ATMM http://www.atmm.nl | Tel: +31-35-6254545 Fax: +31-35-6254555 | mailto:mj@atmm.nl http://www.atmm.nl/~mj | PGP: http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8A32149 ------------------------------------------
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Paul Everitt wrote:
Scott Robertson wrote:
Oh God, I can't belive I'm about to suggest this but... How hard would it
You need a refresher course at the Reeducation Center :^)
be to support the frontpage extensions through Zope? (I feel so dirty) Unfortunatly some of our clients use frontpage. Which at the moment keeps me from moving them into Zope.
Last I looked into this, MS provides only binary extensions to integrate with the web server. It really isn't possible to integrate it into Zope -- it specifically diddles files on the filesystem through a CGI script.
I thought there were two parts to it? One being slight mods to to the web server and the other was a set of cgi scripts. Dosen't Microsoft give those extensions away though? Hmmm I wonder how hard they could be to reverse engineer. --------------------------------------------------- - Scott Robertson Phone: 714.972.2299 - - CodeIt Computing Fax: 714.972.2399 - - http://codeit.com - ---------------------------------------------------
On Thu, Feb 18, 1999 at 08:29:06AM -0800, Scott Robertson wrote:
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Paul Everitt wrote:
Last I looked into this, MS provides only binary extensions to integrate with the web server. It really isn't possible to integrate it into Zope -- it specifically diddles files on the filesystem through a CGI script.
I thought there were two parts to it? One being slight mods to to the web server and the other was a set of cgi scripts. Dosen't Microsoft give those extensions away though? Hmmm I wonder how hard they could be to reverse engineer.
The point is, they are one more proprietary system... WebDAV *is* where companies are moving to, even Microsoft has committed to it for the next release of FrontPage. The time it would take to reverse engineer FP's extensions could be better spent making Zope a better WebDAV platform, in my opinion. Also, I know a lot of people who won't touch FP, and use something else---DreamWeaver, or my favorite GoLive CyberStudio, which has its own set of extensions (though you can run without them too). Do we want to support all those too? ;) This is the point of standards. I've already been told by the GoLive people that they're planning to support WebDAV "soon", and probably in the next release due this year. Chris -- | Christopher Petrilli | petrilli@amber.org
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Christopher G. Petrilli wrote:
I thought there were two parts to it? One being slight mods to to the web server and the other was a set of cgi scripts. Dosen't Microsoft give those extensions away though? Hmmm I wonder how hard they could be to reverse engineer.
The point is, they are one more proprietary system... WebDAV *is* where companies are moving to, even Microsoft has committed to it for the next release of FrontPage. The time it would take to reverse engineer FP's extensions could be better spent making Zope a better WebDAV platform, in my opinion. Also, I know a lot of people who won't touch FP, and use something else---DreamWeaver, or my favorite GoLive CyberStudio, which has its own set of extensions (though you can run without them too). Do we want to support all those too? ;) This is the point of standards. I've already been told by the GoLive people that they're planning to support WebDAV "soon", and probably in the next release due this year.
We have 3 types of customers. 1. That dosen't care what we use, how we use, and who we had to kill to get it done as long as we get it done and it works right. 2. Those who are knowledgeable and only call us when they need some one local to fix something (i.e. DC). 3. Those who think they are in the number 2 category because they own a copy of FP, and are shocked when you show them that their pretty web page, made from a template of course, is actauly made from some tyoe of voodoo commonly refered to as HTML. But you are right WebDav sounds like the ideal approach, most time efficent solution. I just have a lot of customers that use FP and I wish I could make the stop <g>. But then again maybe it's just a personal vendetta. --------------------------------------------------- - Scott Robertson Phone: 714.972.2299 - - CodeIt Computing Fax: 714.972.2399 - - http://codeit.com - ---------------------------------------------------
Paul Everitt wrote:
be to support the frontpage extensions through Zope? (I feel so dirty) Unfortunatly some of our clients use frontpage. Which at the moment keeps me from moving them into Zope.
Last I looked into this, MS provides only binary extensions to integrate with the web server. It really isn't possible to integrate it into Zope -- it specifically diddles files on the filesystem through a CGI script.
Since WebDAV is apparently going to be incorporated into Fpage (and the office suite), I wouldn't bother with fiddling with the proprietary extensions. Incorporate WebDAV, and wait for the rest of the world to catch up. Michael Bernstein.
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Michael Bernstein wrote:
Since WebDAV is apparently going to be incorporated into Fpage (and the office suite), I wouldn't bother with fiddling with the proprietary extensions. Incorporate WebDAV, and wait for the rest of the world to catch up.
Anybody what to place a bet on wether or not MS will add a few things here and there that makes their WebDAV support proprietery to FP and IIS? --------------------------------------------------- - Scott Robertson Phone: 714.972.2299 - - CodeIt Computing Fax: 714.972.2399 - - http://codeit.com - ---------------------------------------------------
On Thu, 18 Feb 1999, Scott Robertson wrote:
Anybody what to place a bet on wether or not MS will add a few things here and there that makes their WebDAV support proprietery to FP and IIS?
As quoted from the WebDAV FAQ page (http://www.webdav.org/other/faq.html): Q. But what about Microsoft and what the Halloween document said about DAV? Something about "decommoditizing protocols"? A. As a published standard, people can decide to adhere to it or not. If Microsoft chooses not to follow the standard, then so be it, but they cannot simply change it. Regardless, I can personally state that Microsoft has been very willing and cooperative to ensure that their products interoperate with mod_dav. In fact, they've been quite helpful - I've fixed a number of bugs that were found with their help. Now, with that said: it is possible for a company to state compliance with the DAV protocol. On top of that protocol, at the application level, they can do things that are special between their client and server. That is where application vendors will add value, and it is a standard part of doing business. If a server provides better application-level support, then you may end up tied to that particular server if you want that functionality. You are free to choose your DAV server, but recognize that you may lose functionality. Your choice, though.
--------------------------------------------------- - Scott Robertson Phone: 714.972.2299 - - CodeIt Computing Fax: 714.972.2399 - - http://codeit.com - ---------------------------------------------------
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://www.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
ngarcia wrote:
Regardless, I can personally state that Microsoft has been very willing and cooperative to ensure that their products interoperate with mod_dav. In fact, they've been quite helpful - I've fixed a number of bugs that were found with their help.
That's what Greg told me as well. He and I talked on the phone back in November and I connected the FP2000 beta to his server (at the time he wasn't thrilled with installing the Office2000 beta on his machine :^) As far as I can tell, the latest-and-greatest FP2000 will *not* successfully connect to any known WebDAV server except the IIS in NT5. Obviously you know this, but have you seen any non-public versions of FP2000 that connect to mod_dav? --Paul
As far as I can tell, the latest-and-greatest FP2000 will *not* successfully connect to any known WebDAV server except the IIS in NT5. Obviously you know this, but have you seen any non-public versions of FP2000 that connect to mod_dav?
--Paul
It could be that the version of WebDAV implemented in FP2000 && IIS 5.0 is based upon an old draft. The final RFC has only been released on the 10th of this month. -- M.J. Pieters, Web Developer | ATMM http://www.atmm.nl | Tel: +31-35-6254545 Fax: +31-35-6254555 | mailto:mj@atmm.nl http://www.atmm.nl/~mj | PGP: http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8A32149 ------------------------------------------
On Fri, 19 Feb 1999, Paul Everitt wrote:
ngarcia wrote:
Regardless, I can personally state that Microsoft has been very willing and cooperative to ensure that their products interoperate with mod_dav. In fact, they've been quite helpful - I've fixed a number of bugs that were found with their help.
That's what Greg told me as well. He and I talked on the phone back in November and I connected the FP2000 beta to his server (at the time he wasn't thrilled with installing the Office2000 beta on his machine :^)
As far as I can tell, the latest-and-greatest FP2000 will *not* successfully connect to any known WebDAV server except the IIS in NT5. Obviously you know this, but have you seen any non-public versions of FP2000 that connect to mod_dav?
--Paul
Sorry Paul, all three paragraphs in that message were quoted from the FAQ, I haven't done any work on WebDAV, and haven't seen any beta copies of FP2000 (I don't think I want to either, FP98 is a giant slow hog, I can't imagine what FP2000 will be like...). Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Paul, First of all, your honesty is very much appreciated, though I think your "5" rating with aspirations for "25" are way too stingy in rating Zope's current IDE model. The very fact that anyone, anywhere with a browser can securely access any document in the web site, with complete Undo functionality ... heck, you're already in 40s or 50s, even if you DO have to type angle brackets and tags into a <textarea>. Now the problem is how to make that functionality accessible to people who want (or must have) WYSIWYG to produce HTML. My initial attempts to use Netscape Composer did not work to my satisfaction. No matter how I tried to set Composer's Publishing properties...Maintain Links, Keep Images With Pages, et al...it (Composer, I guess, though maybe Zope?) would invariably change certain link strings during the PUT operation, such that pointers to images and other resources would be lost. Second, if there was a problem during the PUT, a very brief (less than a second) error screen would appear and I could not find a way to keep the page up long enough to read what it said. Anyway, I was just starting a Cold Fusion project when we were doing initial Zope testing, so I didn't have any time to futz with Principia and really try to find solutions. Certainly by comparison, CF Studio rates an 80 or 90 and does provide Remote Development Services (and FTP), plus direct access to ODBC data sources on the remote server, nice drag-and-drop insertion of table fields, pretty tag decoration, tag completion, and lots of other good stuff, blah blah blah. The bad news: all that comes at a cost of several grand, and still does NOT provide universal, secure access to anyone with a browser, nor the server-side flexibility of developing our own callable routines in a non-proprietary language (Python). (CF allows you to develop your own custom tags, of course, but learning and using that functionality would tie you even more tightly to Allaire's future revenue stream.) Anyway, I'm rambling. We're definitly looking for reasons to give Zope an unqualified 'yes' as you put it. So I'm glad to hear that you're working on the IDE problem and look forward to hearing more about those efforts. Alan Johnston At 02:26 PM 2/17/1999 -0500, you wrote:
Tom Jenkins writes:
Hi folks, We're in the process of evaluating Zope and Cold Fusion. I'm the resident Open Source advocate <g>, so I'd like to make sure that Zope has all its benefits given its due.
We're, (well actually Alan is), working on a contract where the client requested Cold Fusion so he has some direct experience. We installed Principia back in December and actually are testing it for another client, but haven't spent much time with it unfortunately.
Alan has brought up some usage concerns of his and I hope someone on the list could respond. Please don't think that Alan is against the product; no in fact he is very interested in it but is just unsure of the tools available to help do good work.
Understood. And thanks for sharing the points with the community.
------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 10:08:00 -0500 To: TomJenkins@zentuit.com From: Alan Johnston <flames direct to me, please [g]> Subject: Zope musings
I don't know why I didn't think of this before. As you can tell from earlier comments, I like Cold Fusion studio, the IDE which allows you to control web page, database, query, and site management all in one window. It is a very slick way to create web pages in general, whether or not they include CF tags and CF queries.
Tis true. On the other hand, only developers can use CF Studio, unless you plan to plop down several thousand dollars, ship it to you customers, and then train them on it.
Put another way: what if someone outside the company wanted to change a ColdFusion page? What would be their IDE?
But there's no reason you couldn't also use CF Studio to develop Zope/DTML pages. You would have to save your pages on a local drive and use Zope's
Don't suppose CF supports any standards, like saving to an FTP site or publishing using HTTP PUT? (Note that Zope's FTP support should be solid within a month.)
Upload feature to publish them. But that's a fairly small price in inconvenience. Anyway, the lack of a nice, user-friendly interface for web page creation is the one klunky thing about Zope (Principia) at our site.
I certainly agree. We have spent a lot of time over the last month thinking about an IDE. The direction that we are going is:
o choose an IDE strategy that reinforces Open Source, rather than attempt to annoint a proprietary tool like CF Studio
o base the IDE strategy on advanced standards (HTML4, CSS2, DOM, XML, RDF, and WebDAV)
It appears that I'll have more to say on this in about a month. Other efforts, such as integrating PythonWorks from Pythonware, are feasible as well.
Typing angle brackets and obscure HTML tags into your browser is a fun way to astound and impress your non-HTML-literate friends, but I wouldn't have wanted to make a Georgetown/CASS questionnaire system that way. And, again, trying to use Netscape Composer, as recommended in the Principia docs is a sub-par solution. So this is really the one (only?) area I've seen so far where CF is way ahead Zope.
If someone has Linux on their desktop, how do they manage CF sites?
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!" ??
So if we want to use Zope for real-world tasks, one important need in the near term is to find a better way to do actual web page/HTML
If *we* is your shop, how about...XEmacs? Using ZServer to publish your object system by HTTP, you can be *significantly* more productive:
o fantastic editor that now runs deliciously on Windows
o bulk copy from/to the local machine
o all the ediff capabilities you could dream up
o html-mode, etc.
o using W3 in XEmacs, access to things like setting properties and undo
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.
--Paul
Paul Everitt Digital Creations paul@digicool.com 540.371.6909
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://www.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
Alan Johnston DevIS (Development InfoStructure) adjohnston@worldnet.att.net 919-844-4124
participants (10)
-
Alan Johnston -
Brad Clements -
Christopher G. Petrilli -
David Ascher -
Martijn Faassen -
Martijn Pieters -
Michael Bernstein -
ngarcia -
Paul Everitt -
Scott Robertson