[BlueBream] ZTFY and ZAM

[Christopher Lozinski]

I am trying this stuff again.  For those who do not know me, I am the
big proponent of a simple TTW interface on top of the monstrous
complexity that is called bluebream. 

Yesterday I fired up the newest release of ZTFY.  Just two weeks old.  I
still cannot figure out how to get the site correctly loaded.   I am
waiting to hear back from the author.  Maybe I am still the only outside
user he has. I did not jump on the ZTFY as fast as I might have.  I
realized my heart was not really in ZTFY, ZAM sounds fine to me.

So the next thing I tried was ZAM.  Still does not run.  Not that I
expected it to.    It is much closer to what I want to be doing.    If
only I could get it to work.

I get some error message when I tried to fire up ZAM.  It is scary. 
There are a few hundred thousand lines of code there.  I now understand
the importance of the Known Good Set.  If I can start off with an
application that runs, the known good set KGS, it is easy to modify it. 
Start off with something broken, and it is just scary.  I have no idea
where the problem is.   I could fire up the debugger, and dig through
the code, and try to figure out what is going wrong.  So many layers of
code in there, maybe not that well documented.  It is really scary.   Is
it the new version of python that is causing the problem.  Is it
something in ZAM?   Are incorrect versions of libraries to blame?  I
have no idea where to start. 

I could email one of the authors, and pay him to bring ZAM up to speed. 
Probably would not be that expensive.  Of course I then miss out on the
learning process.

I guess what I really need is a mentor.  Someone to talk to about ZAM
and Zope and who answers my questions and points me in the right direction.

The web has evolved to where we sit on top of these enormous code
bases.   Used to be I just had a compiler, and a tiny library from the
vendor.  Now it is this huge code base.  I keep wanting to toss out ZTK,
and just start with ZODB, but there is so much good stuff in there.  I
think the guys who wrote it are smart.  There may be some garbage, but
who knows.  Of course it is way too big for me to judge all their work. 
Better to start with a KGS.

I guess my first request is for free advice.  My second request is for a
mentor.  My third, least desirable path would be to pay one of the ZAM
authors to release a version that works. 

It is great to write these emails.  It clears my thinking.  My other
option is to get in there, and write some documentation of ZTK.  I can
fire up the debugger, figure out roughly where the problem is, then
document those modules, and by that time, if I cannot figure out what
the problem is, then at least I have created some new documentation. 

I used to love Zwiki.  Maybe it was a leading wiki server.   Now it is
dated.  I recently fired up a moinmoin wiki, and am quite pleased with
it.  It is sad that the Zope community is so dead.    But I do not see a
better path ahead than using Bluebream for my web servers. 

So baring any better advice, I think my next step will be to fire up a
moinmoin wiki for bluebream, and start trying to document the
interaction of the components that are causing my bug. 

Comments most appreciated. 


-- 
Regards
Christopher Lozinski

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