[ZDP] A first shot at a Zope Quickstart (part 1)

[Maik Roeder]

Hi Rik !

Rik Hoekstra wrote:
> Below follows a first shot at a Zope Quickstart. It is only the first part
> and in rather clumsy plain text. Further on there should follow (many) other
> parts: DTML, Connecting a database in Zope etc etc (not security).

These could be Subjects in the Zope Beginners Portal.

> Should this go into the ZDP Wiki.
> Should I start a Quickstart project/task.
> (How) Do we integrate this with ZBook?

Perhaps once it has become stable in a Subject/Topic 
Hierarchy it can go into the ZBook. This would obsolete
ZBook Draft Submission Folders as the central repository
for Drafts. Maybe then Draft Submission Folders could
be used for an Approver or Editor to have another look
at a new chapter shortly before it is released ?
 
> ----------------------------------
> 
> Zope Quickstart (part 1)
> 
> Zope consists of several components which intimately work together to
> provide a coherent and consistent whole.

It should be enough to say that "Zope consists of several components",
and maybe name a few. 

> It is designed for the web from
> scratch and it will cater for most common web needs, which are all present
> in the quote from the Zope site.

"designed from scratch" does not sound good. "Cater for most common web
needs" does not sound very clear. Yes, it is a web application platform,
so I can expect it to cater for the most common web needs. You mentioned
the quote above, and maybe it is not necessary to refer to it again here.
 
> You can use Zope from a host of different platforms, including Linux,
> Windows NT, 95, 98, 2000, and most major Unix varieties and even from BeOS.

Another word for "from a host": "on many"
 
> What Zope is good for
> 
> Whether you should use Zope, depends on you needs. 
> If you want a flexible,
> well thought out platform for your web application, you should definitely
> take a look at Zope. 

Phrase it the other way around:

You should definitely take a look at Zope if you want a flexible, well...

> If you want a flashy looking, easy to start (but
> perhaps not so easy to maintain) product, if you care less about (initial)
> cost and if you do not want to spend some time learning - Zope may not be
> for you. 

Also here:

Zope may not be for you if you want a flashy ...

> For example: your current web site depends completely on Microsoft
> products and you have a lot of time and money invested and you do not have a
> new challenge in front of you - why change?

Maybe the last paragraph is not necessarily a good advertisement for Zope.
It should go to the Zope evaluators portal. Let's treat only those people
in the beginners guide that have decided for Zope.
 
> If you check out Zope, be prepared to spend some time learning. Not that it
> is hard to start a simple web site in Zope. If you have a set of HTML pages
> that you want to put into Zope, it will take you a half hour in a simple
> Zope setup to get it up and running. 

Maybe mention that there exists a product to do make the transition easier.

> This may be a good starting point, but
> it cant't be more than a starting point, as Zope is for dynamic sites.

Maybe better: "You can take your first pages as a starting point for further
extensions as you learn more on how to create dynamic web applications
with Zope."

> If you only have static pages to serve, you may be better off with a
> specialized web server (like Apache). If you have dynamic content (and who
> wants to be static rather than dynamic?) read on.

Maybe better: "Even if you want to serve static pages with Zope, there
is a Product LocalFs with which you can serve them from your file system
like Apache. Let's concentrate on how you can use Zope to create truly
dymanic web applications.
 
> There is more to Zope than just this. Zope is an advanced platform, and it
> is **well structured**.

I would expect this anyway. This makes most sense if you mention how
it was in the ancient times when people create CGI scripts, and everything
was very fragmented.

> Therefore, it works best with a well-structured web
> application.

Maybe better: Zope makes it easy to create well-structured web applications,
but it requires some planning.

> So you should be prepared to do some thinking about the
> structure of your site. This *will* pay off in term of maintainability and
> ease of extending.
>
> Using Zope alongside another Web techniques

Perhaps this should not be mentioned here. 
 
> You may already be considering using Zope, but you already have considerable
> effort put into another tool for your site, for instance straight cgi, php
> or asp. Zope integrates well with any webserver able to run cgi. This means
> you can continue to use your old scripts side by side with Zope. (However it
> is not unlikely that once you get the knack of Zope you'll want to migrate
> all your major Web scripting applications - you have been warned). How to
> make them work together, will depend mostly on what you actually *are* using
> right now, so please read the specific sections for that information.
> [links]

It may be sufficient to mention that Zope can be integrated with other 
tools, and then link to this topic in the ZDP site.
 
> Zope Requirements
> 
> If you consider using Zope, there may be a number of questions related to
> cost, requirements in hard and software.
> Zope is freely available from the Zope site http://www.zope.org. Zope is an
> open source product.
> The latest version is indicated on the downloading page. It depends on the
> platform you're running on what version you will have to download [links].
> There are binary versions for Win32 and for Linux [other?]. You can always
> download a source release if you want to build the package yourself. The
> development version of Zope is available from CVS [link].
> Zope is platform independent. This means that you can develop in Zope on one
> platform (say Windows 95) and have a production machine on a very different
> one (say
> 
> For Zope, you will need relatively modest hardware. Digital Creations (who
> created Zope) set out to have Zope run on a hardware configuration of less
> than $ 1000. Zope.org *is* running on such a configuration.
> 
> You may use Zope for free, but you are asked to put the Zope attribution
> buttion on your homepage or somewhere most appropriate on your site.

This is not completely accurate. The new Zope license does not require you
to add such a button, if I remember right. It used to be different.
 
> Setting up Zope
> 
> After you've downloaded the package, the setup procedure you'll have to
> follow depends on the platform you're working on and of questions whether
> you want Zope to integrate with existing webservers and so on.[links]
> 
> In a very generalized setup walkthrough you'll have to:
> 1) ensure you are running with the proper permissions on your system
> 2) unpack or execute (Windows) the distribution
> 3) Perhaps/probably change some parameters for running Zope
> 4) Set a superuser name/password combination
> 5) Startup Zope.
> 
> In a typical Win32 setup session you could be up and running in 20 minutes -
> if you have a reasonable connection to the web (but the Zope download is
> modest). In Linux ... [XXX complete]

Just put in some links.

[snip]

I haven't read the rest of your document, but I will do so soon,
and send you more feedback.

From what I read up to now, I really think it could be beneficial
to actually write the Quickstart in Subjects and Topics on the ZDP site,
and make heavy use of hyperlinks. This will fragmentarize things,
but will be good for separation of concerns. Once you have treated
each topic, you can put them together again later in one document
as a chapter in ZBook. I think this procedure can be thought of
as a more structured Wiki, because people can add thoughts below
the Topics and then the author integrates them, deleting the comments,
but giving credit where it is due. 

Greetings,

Maik Röder