[Zope-CMF] Is unmodified CMF useless? Some Plone questions.

[Philip Kilner]

Hi Peter,

Peter Shute (NUW) wrote:
> I've been playing with Zope and now CMF for a few days now.  I've been
> trying to see what they can do, and have come to the conclusion that without
> a lot of modifications the basic sites they create are fairly useless for
> anything.
> 

Zope is an application server - without an application, you won't see 
much of use. There are a whole bunch of fabulous Zope products which are 
useful out of the box if you want a ready-rolled application (SquishDot 
comes to mind), and others which are useful for developers (Formulator 
for example).

CMF is a framework for a specific type of application (e.g. content 
management), built on top of Zope, that adds a whole bunch of 
functionality, but is not a finished product.

> Is that correct, or have I missed some basic features?
> 

No, I don't think so - but you may be missing the point as to what they 
are /intended/ to be useful for.

> I've now installed Plone, and this is much more like what I was expecting,
> so here are some questions:
> 
> 1. I don't quite understand the relationship between CMF and Plone.  They're
> both Zope products, but is Plone dependent on CMF or the other way around?
> 

Plone is an /application/, built on the CMF framework, which in turn 
runs on the Zope application server.

> 2. Does this mailing list cover Plone as well as CMF, or is there a more
> appropriate one?  I couldn't see one on the Zope site.
> 

For Plone mailing lists, see the Plone site. Plone is a separate 
organisation to the Zope Corporation who are behind Zope and CMF.

> 3. I installed the latest CMF, then uninstalled it before installing Plone,
> because I noticed that it came with CMF.  Am I now running an older version
> of CMF, and if so what happens if I upgrade it?
> 

I can't tell without you specifying the versions and packages involved. 
Since Plone interacts with CMF in some non-trivial ways, I've never seen 
the need to deviate from the version of CMF provided with my version of 
Plone.

> 4. How do you say Plone?  Does is sound like "clone", or is it PL-1?
> 

I say it like "clone", but since my communications about it are purely 
electronic, I may be making a horrible mistake!

;-)

-- 

Regards,

PhilK

Email: phil at xfr.co.uk / Voicemail & Facsimile: 07092 070518

"The lyf so short, the craft so long to learne" - Chaucer