[Zope-CMF] anyone interested in developing CMF "Book"...

george donnelly list@zettai.net
Mon, 24 Feb 2003 17:25:25 -0500


[Kari-Hans Kommonen wrote (khk@uiah.fi) on 2/24/03 5:14 PM]

> If you come up with some useful way of collecting examples of
> stereotypical hard problems for newbies (that the book then should be
> able to answer), I'd be happy to submit a few....

that would be called a use case. the best we have right now are standard cmf
objects but we'll be moving everything to a BackTalk book when its ready.

so please feel free to submit any time. you can add them to your
cmf.zope.org member folder for the time being.
 
> I think that the most needy and potential CMF newbie is something
> like a manager-developer with modest Python exposure, limited time,
> but interest and ambition and nice but not-completely-trivial
> application ideas. She does not need so much documentation about how
> the CMF behaves, but instead of how to make it behave differently.
> She does not program for a living, and is not planning to make zope
> products, and is very happy if she can avoid browsing code, but she
> likes to see and use illustrative and well documented code examples.
> Maybe she has a free lance programmer that helps her, but this person
> is not a python/zope/cmf expert and it would cost her a fortune to
> pay the programmer to study all of this only in order to solve her
> fairly small problems well.
> 
> 
> Developers Guide
> ----------------
> - CMF concepts and building blocks and their responsibilities
> - strategies for customising, design rationales
> - explanation of some characteristically python/zope ways of doing
> things (as many come from other language environments with less
> on-the-fly customization and plug-in-ability etc.) (basics and
> fundamentals here, more examples in the CookBook)
> - etc.
> 
> 
> Reference
> ---------
> - module documentation is not enough! the reader of the ref must get
> the content in a readable organization; now browsing the code is a
> 'lost in hyperspace' problem.
> - for every abstract description a concrete example of the thing in use
> - links to cookbook, showing off diverse uses of the features
> 
> 
> CookBook
> --------
> - real life, not too watered down examples, rationales and techniques
> well explained (in fact, good howtos - but organized into an evolving
> whole)
> - the problems would also help to determine how the reference should
> be written, and the cookbook should link to the reference whenever
> the feature explained is really generic (so that all the generic
> stuff does not get hidden inside the cookbook (which may be easier to
> write content for))
> - maybe this is the hottest area, where the community could best get
> together. Many can contribute good questions/problems, and all can
> try to give a good solution, while some can judge what are the best
> ways.
> 
> The main difference between this cookbook process and the existing
> howtos and the mailing list would be to try to converge on a useful
> set of non-trivial, real problems that can be well explained and
> dissected. For those who need help, it aids in navigating the problem
> space, and for those who write howtos, it helps in focusing their
> explanation efforts.
> 
> The existing mailing list and the howto's are  of course the gold
> mine for identifying important cookbook topics...
> 
> 
> Index
> -----
> - the most important thing at the moment. it is too hard to find
> things with google or zope search. just having a good index to the
> existing material would take us a long way from today...
> 
> 
> kari-hans

this all looks good. can you post it as a comment on the
cmf.zope.org/doc/book page?

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