[Zope-dev] RE: [Zope] Barriers to Zope popularity: Part 1: wysiwig editing

[Martijn Pieters]

At 03:50 23/09/99 , Dody Gunawinata wrote:
>I think "DOCUMENTATION" is more than anything else, the greatest barrier
>to people using Zope.
>Probably Zope is too powerful for its own good. You've got this tons of
>features that you can exploit,
>so much of good thing, but there is currently no document that actually
>guides a beginner gently and hides
>the more advance features from them.
>
>For example, about storing data. In Cold Fusion/ASP/Perl, there aren't
>many ways to store a data, flat file or a database. That's easy
>to explain to a beginner..Do it this way, only. Limited but simple. With
>Zope, you got Persistent database, SQL database, and tons of cool tricks
>to do with them. I see one beginner example (can't remember the article)
>where it guides the user to create a WebBoard using Python/Persistent. A
>beginner would simply lost. A ZSQL method would be a lot simpler, as SQL
>is easier to understand.
>
>Much of the documentation is designed with *advance* developers in mind.
>It's time for Zope for Dummies.
>
>Dody

What many people forget here is that Zope is a Web Application Platform. It 
is, first and foremost, designed as a framework for applications.

All the DTML Methods and Folder objects and whatnot, are standard objects 
to help you design an interface, they are part of and build upon the Zope 
framework. Together with the ZODB, security, the web interface, the 
marshalling of variable types and RDBMS integration, Zope makes one heck of 
a Web Application Platform.

Zope was designed for Web Application Developers, not designers. The 
documentation follows this design. I actually feel that dummies should stay 
away from Zope. Frontpage is for dummies.

As far as DTML editing goes: DTML was designed to put a face on the 
application, not so much as to be used on its own. DTML is very powerful 
for this, but its features also make it unsuitable for WISYWIG editing.

--
Martijn Pieters, Web Developer
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