[ZWeb] Newbie thoughts on zope.org re-org

Bill Anderson bill@libc.org
07 Dec 2001 19:08:07 -0700


On Wed, 2001-12-05 at 10:58, alan runyan wrote:
> > * I feel there is a very slight bias in Zope documentation to talk about
> > how to code and design you own products rather than how to create a
> > typical usable site by plugging together whats there.
> 
> ZOPE in its current incarnation is really a development
> toolkit/framework/whatever you want to call it.  You really have to kinda
> understand Object Oriented programming and python to 'get' ZOPE.  You can
> get fairly far with mix and match of Products.  The prob is most Products
> dont co-operate (being addressed by new architecture in Zope 3) without lots
> of coding.

Agreed.

 
... 
> > Maybe this is due to a lack of "out of the box site" type products but
> > starting with Zope I had to fight the feeling that I had to learn how to
> > program/design with DTML and ZClasses just to put together a simple
> > site. You don't want to do that when you are starting, just seeing the
> > zope management interface for the first time can be overwhelming.
> 
> There is a lack of OOTB sites.  This could probably be solved with a
> OOTB-Zope distribution.  that came stock w/ RDBM adapters, pre-installed
> Products, and maybe a pre-populated ZODB.

I've thought about this *a lot*. I've been kicking around the idea of a
ZODB-Distro CD for a long, long time. It would include a customization
script, and a custom (pre-populated) ZODB. If I had the default data.fs
population script, I'd probably had done it by now; it's make building
custom Data.fs'es much, much easier.


> > * I'm still having problems finding Products/howtos. They are presented
> > as far too long a list and aren't easily searchable. Its a bit
> > frustrating to search for a product, download it, try it out for a
> > while, run into a problem, search the lists and find that the product
> > has been replaced by something else (ok extreme example).
> 
> not really an extreme example.  but I believe having some sort of packaging
> system could help out.  we should come up with a Zope OOTB Certified label
> that can be put on Products that can be installed w/o programming
> intervention.  I have always been a fan of 'certifying' products.
> Especially when it comes to RDBMS -- which Postgres Adapter should I use?
> This could also lead to people being more organized on, 'things to do to
> make this product OOTB certified'  .... just throwing out ideas


Here is something else I've been thinking about too. At my day job, one
of my tasks is Mickeysoft certification of hardware. The though has
occurred to me that ZC could do something like that, for third-party
products. Something like this:

 o Developer creates Zope products that does nifty stuff

 o Developer submits product for certification to the a set of 
   "standards", such as perhaps compliance with a Zope Standard Base

 o ZC charges a small fee, perhaps variable by the complexity of the
   app.

Of course, the fee would have to be quite small initially, or at least
for simpler products, otherwise it gets unused due to costs.

Anyway, just some other ideas ... :)

Bill