[ZDP] (Fwd) Re: [ZDP] REVIEW: Proposed Zope Developer's Guide Outlin

[Rik Hoekstra]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: zdp-admin@zope.org [mailto:zdp-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Tom
> Deprez
> Sent: donderdag 20 mei 1999 23:24
> To: Rik Hoekstra; zdp@zope.org
> Subject: Re: [ZDP] (Fwd) Re: [ZDP] REVIEW: Proposed Zope Developer's
> Guide Outlin
>
>
>
> : Agreed!
> : I think the ZDP should provide example DTML, which are also viewable
> : at the spot. In this way people could go to the site with a vague
> : idea like I want to make a tree, but I do not quite know whether
> : that's possible, and if it's possible, how do I accomplish it. They
> : see the examples on the side and think: this is exactly (or
> : approximately) what I want.  Or I want something from this and
> : something from that. Needless to say the examples should have more
> : than one way to access them (from the FAQ, from regular tutorials,
> : from the reference etc). This means however, that ideally the
> : examples should explore all features of the feature they describe.
>
>
> Further thinking on what Michel has previous said about examples (i.e. to
> make some real life examples). I like this idea and have lots of toughts,
> but I was also thinking on another way to give examples (besides
> this one).
>
> For example. A person needs a to solve a certain problem. From
> ZDP we refer
> him to a descision tree. This means that on every level a
> question is asked
> about the problem. Depeding on his answer (yes/no), other
> questions appear,
> until the problem is known and a proposal is given....
>
> I know a nice idea, but perhaps too difficult to implement...

Hm, this will be very difficult to implement in a general and useful way.
Moreover, my experience with this kind of 'pre-cooked' decision trees is
that everything ends up either looking and (not) working the same (look for
a widespread example at the example 'website templates' that come with
FrontPage98).

I like the idea, however. Perhaps we could cook up something for some
general problems, by way of introduction. Or to get people started with a
Zopesite. This would be something in between real world examples (which in
some way or another always seem to be from a different world than mine) and
the isolated examples I proposed. Thinking some more, this would be an ideal
way to get the famous Zen of Zope across...

Implement them as a ZClass. Then this would be transferable to different
kinds of problems. And try to implement this documenting itself as the
decision tree builds the (partial) site.

Speaking about real world examples (speaking from a university background):
- on-line conference - with wistles and bells: membership subscription,
session registration, paper registration, search system, ordering by
subject, discipline, discussion forums
- on-line web based teaching system (a la WebCT <http://webct.curtin.edu.au>
to name just one example)

I would love to implement some of these myself, but they require quite a bit
of work and I don't know if I can find the time.

Rik