[ZDP] Re: [Zope] <znewb010> agitprop = How to find 'find' ??? </znewb010>

[Maik Roeder]

Hi Jason !

Jason Cunliffe wrote:
> Ok its hot here in the city today ...and I am going @#$%@ nuts trying to
> find specific help on various topics in zope.

The ZDP is trying to solve this problem. You can find the new Zope
Documentation Portal at http://zdp.zope.org

> I know the advice exists "_.{'("['some.where']")'}" in all the great
> mesasges and howtos and tips whcih have accrued over the past couple years.

On ZDP you can narrow down your search by going down a Subject Topic
hierarchy that starts with a specific community. Stuff that is interesting
for specific communities is separated from stuff that is interesting for 
other communities.
 
> Q1: Why oh why oh why oh why when you go to Zope
> http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Tips does it only display
> the first 32 characters of the How-to desciption? This is not 1980!
> People have taken the trouble to write a descriptive title and you can't
> even read it in full .. what is the sense in that?

Absolutely right ! We are working hard on the ZDP project to mirror
the stuff from the main Zope site and make the ZDP the only resource
for Zope documentation. Digital Creations has a Documentation Plan,
but they don't have the man power to make it happen soon. The problem
is that the ZDP also does not have the man power to do very much,
and we are struggling very hard to make it easier for people to
find the stuff they need. I do have some scripts ready to make XML from
all the Tips on Zope.org, but I still need to program a small tool
to upload this XML to the ZDP.
 
> Q2: Why is it not possible to see the whole thing as one scrollable list?
> Why is not possible to group these at least superficially by catgory?

To do this you would have to assign all tips a category. At the ZDP portal
we have lots of documents that still need a Subject and Topic, and we
also have to tag the stuff from Zope.org. Once the stuff is in the ZDP
site, we can define different views on the stuff - no problem. On the ZDP
site we are in control of Documentation, and can defines as many views
as we want.
 
> Q3: Why is there no infoseek-like search engine which allows an intial
> search, and then search within again to narrow things down. I find typically
> this mechanism is by far the most effective way to egt to the information
> one wants in the fastest possible time.

I would be interested to create something like this for the ZDP, but I have
other things that have much higher priority. In the ZDP, you go from
Subjects for a community to topics, and from there you either find the
stuff on ZDP, or you get some predefined searches on top with which
you can find really great results (You'll have to try it to see what
I mean.)

> For example search for 'External'.
> Then search within for 'python', then search agin within those results for
> 'import' etc... Why please can someone explain to me why this is so hard to
> do? I thought that infoseek's engine was written in Python or a big chunk of
> it..

To demonstrate how a search on the ZDP site works, let me take another
example (For DTML there is already some tagged information). If you are 
a User that is interested in DTML and Tags, then you would go to
the User Portal, click on DTML and then on Tags. The ZDP has some Snippets
and FAQ Questions on this Subject and Topic, so you can look there for a
solution.
But you are also not stuck there. There are searches to search the following
search engines:

Zope.org
CodeCatalog
eGroups
Google

The searches are predefined for the Subject and Topic:

eGroups: Search for DTML and Tags
         Search for DTML
         Search for Tags 

I have found this extremely useful. It can be improved, and I would
like to hear some suggestions on what else can be done.
 
> Q4: Why not show off Zope by having a nice Zope search interface to
> searching itself?
> The new Nip is an improvement on things but still very hard to sift through
> the results.

The best search is useless if the information is not enriched with
enough meta information. This is hard to do after there are already
many documents which are not tagged. 
 
> Q5: Why for @$%@'s sake is there no organization, structure or search for
> Zope prodcuts at http://www.zope.org/Products ?

On the ZDP, we are planning to have a Portal for every Project, where
the community of Users can exchange their experiences. Indeed, every
Subject and Topic will could have it's community, and for each there could
be Discussions on the website. We need to give a great service to the
Zope community, and that will take some hard work. I am planning to
open up the Portal for contributions by visitors. Visitors can already add Subjects, Topics, Comments, FAQ Questions and Answers and Drafts.

> For example 'Member Contributed Products' appear to be listed neither by
> name nor topic nor author nor date... what's with that. The zen of searching
> zope appears to be 'when you find it you will know'.. How hard is it to put
> some useful structure on this? 

I have done it with the stuff on ZDP, and I can tell you that it is very
hard to categorize things in a nice fashion. You can try it on your own
if you want, I can give you a login to the ZDP site.

> How many newbie email posts would be saved by
> an accessible presentation? If Zope is so powerful why can't it be
> configured to show it's own stuff more clearly.

Document Management is a really hard problem, which Zope does not try to 
solve ! Zope is an application Server, and a Content management system,
but it is not a Document Management system. It can be done with Zope, but
Zope does not have specialized tools for this. The ZDP-Tools have grown
from a system for uploading Drafts for ZBook and managing the ZDP FAQs and
Snippets to a Portal for the Zope communities. The Portal that you can see
now on ZDP has been developed in the last 7 days in my spare time. 
 
> Q6: Am I the only one who finds all this very strange?

I guess not :-)
 
> I love the 'idea' of zope and really want to learn to use it as a basis for
> many projects, but am finding I am being driven towards researching other
> solutions, simply because I cannot afford the time, [dealy/expense] and
> frustration of constantly seeking some valid examples quickly of the syntax.
> As an interim I turning to learn to use Python Methods and External Methods
> as a better solution, since at least that way it is easier to develop and
> read.

Each Portal has a quick intro leading the reader to the "good stuff". 
This has to be done for each Subject and Topic as well. If you have a tree
with 6 Portals, each with 6 Subjects and 6 Topics, then you have 36 Subjects
and 216 Topics, which sums up to 258 nodes for which to provide the service
of pointing to the good stuff. This can only be done collaboratively with
the whole Zope community.
 
> In know Zope is free and I cannot complain.
> But imho there is  a serious obstacle to its broader growth which is the
> learning curve.
> My impression is that a major obstacle to willing newbies is simply decent
> access to the archives via some smart zope-based search tools.

Search is not everything. You need to point each community to the resources
they need. Zope Evaluators, Users, Administrators, Developers, Hackers and
SIGs need their own point for exchanging ideas and helping each other to learn
about Zope.

> I draw 3
> conclusions:
> 
> 1. I am simply too dumb and too lazy to trawl though gadzillion threads to
> find my info

Then I invite everyone join the ZDP, and once they have found the info
come back and share it in the Community under the Subject and Topic !

> 2. Zope has some serious problems and cannot really do what needs to be done
> in terms of dynamic search and presentation

The ZDP has the aim of doing just that. We are not there yet, but with your
help, and our ZDP-Tools we can get where we want to be !

> 3. Digital Creations are too busy/tired etc to put time in for free to get
> the web site advanced like this

Digital Creations should open the Documentation and let the ZDP be the
only resource for documentation !

> 4. No-one has really applied themselves to the problem. Those who know don't
> need it and the rest struggle along

The ZDP has been doing so since a very long time, and has produced great
resources like the ZQR. We are now in a position to solve to problem once
and for all times, but we need your help !
 
> Wht do you think ?

Thanks a lot for your email, which gave me the chance to present
my ideas on this topic from the ZDP point of view.

I think that all further discussion on this topic needs to be done
on the ZDP mailing list at zdp@zope.org.

Greetings,

Maik Röder