[Zope] External Methods

[Michael Bernstein]

Jens Vagelpohl wrote:
> 
> that's an interesting point. i have this ongoing discussion with one of my
> best friends who does webdesign and web-programming (nothing on a real
> programming language level like perl or python) for a living. he swears by
> cold fusion.
> 
> now, is zope really what cold fusion wants to be? i have to plead ignorance
> when it comes to using cold fusion, i never tried it. from what this friend
> keeps telling me it looks like cold fusion allows you to do the fancy
> shmancy graphics stuff pretty well with WYSIWIG editors and such. i don't
> think that's the road zope is going itself, zope as i see it is more about
> enabling, programming, and basically being the workhorse back-end to those
> graphics.

Hmm, The parallel is closer between CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language) and DTML.
ColdFusion does not have an integrated ODB, nor does it have Zope's
through-the-web management.

CFML has a syntax that is more elegant than the 'old-style' DTML, but is roughly
equivalent to the 'new-style' DTML.

Allaire has ColdFusion Studio, which is a souped-up version of Allaire Homesite.
Studio is probably the best HTML/Server-Side-Programming IDE that I am aware of
that is available for Wintel boxen (I love the Codesweeper function). BTW I
never use Studios wysiwyg features. It also integrates nicely with Macromedia
Dreamweaver, which is the best wysiwyg editor, period.

Note: A very close competitor to ColdFusion Studio was Elemental Software's
Drumbeat (http://www.drumbeat.com), which unfortunately had gone down an ASP
only path that spelled its doom. They were recently acquired by Macromedia, and
given Macromedia's history of browser-agnosticism with Dreamweaver, this could
lead to a very interesting product, from Zope's POV(a server-agnostic IDE,
perhaps based on WebDAV?).

Now, none of the preceding should be taken as a criticism of Zope, as two things
that Zope has (the integrated ODB and through-the-web management), not to
mention cross platform deployment, are category-killer features. Zope's
standards-based approach of embracing multiple clients on multiple platforms is
far superior to Allaire's proprietary approach of providing an optimized client
on a single platfrom, no matter how good it is.

Michael Bernstein.