[ZDP] New Site Design

[Maik Roeder]

Hi Chris !

Chris Withers wrote:
> True... I guess my idea would be to link to it and then assign it as
> something that needs to be written about. When the ZDP document is done,
> the link can be kept but no longer matters...

It is good to always give credit to your sources anyway, so ...
 
> > You may not have noticed it, but indeed when you click on a Topic, the ZDP
> > is searched in the background. Alas, not everything is found, simply because
> > not everything has been meta-tagged.
> 
> Hmm, cool :-)

For the fun of it, I have tagged the Tasks so the appear in
the member portal:

http://zdp.zope.org/portals/members/tasks/task
 
> The interface on ZDP still needs a LOT of work. Particularly when I'm
> logged in, there are links all over the place and the content is too
> spaced out to be very readable. Which is bad in documentation ;-)

This interface has grown, but can be easily shrinked to something consistent.
This is not my problem up to now, because I can happily live with it. It
is early enough now to worry about it, which comes close to the Extreme 
Programming philosophy.

> <soapbox>
> I've already said the key to making ZDP work is to get it to be the
> primary source for documentation. For this to happen it has to be easy
> and friendly to use, which currently it isn't. 

I have hacked the Manager interface, while the user interface is already
quite consistent, indeed ! The possible actions are all shown in context,
and the forms explain exactly what has to be entered with the possibility 
to give local guidance for each form element.

> Documentation is one of
> the few things that really does need to be legible and easy to read and
> nicely formatted for it to be useful. Otherwise people will stick to
> what they're doing now...

ZDP members will get documentation in the member portal. Have a look at the
existing subjects and topics. You can see that there is enough room to 
explain things.

> </soapbox>
> which brings me to the second point:
> I'd love to help in making this happen but ZDP is just too daunting:
> There are loads of classes and I wouldn't have a clue about where I
> should try to change stuff.

Forget all the classes, except for one single class: DocumentFolderClass.
It is the class from which all other classes are derived, and all the 
interesting stuff is going on there. There is close to zero additional
information in all the other classes ! To get an overview look at the
following Drafts:

http://zdp.zope.org/projects/zdptools/Drafts
 
> Now, ideally, ZDP should be simple and self documenting. If it's obvious
> to use and maintain, then chances are that even the newest newbie out
> there will be able to use it, and add to it as they learn things.

Have a look at:

http://zdp.zope.org/projects/zdptools/DocumentFolder

The documentation is not yet finished, but this gives an overview of all
classes, and you can quickly jump to their implementation to see what they do.
 
> Either ZDP needs to be 'sorted' to make this happen, or it needs to be
> documented itself. But would we need documentation to understand that
> documentation? ;-)

I will make the interface more convenient for Members once I have finished 
the Meta hierarchy stuff. 
 
Best regards,

Maik Röder