[Zope] Product Creation Comments

[Kevin Dangoor]

On Fri, Feb 12, 1999 at 11:24:53AM -0500, Paul Everitt wrote: 
,-----
| It's hard for us to know where to start.  We got a <FLAME> yesterday
| from the exact opposite: more examples with no Python, all DTML.  We
| also get complaints about debugging the process of getting it started
| (apparently Apache configuration is our business as well).
| 
| It's hard to know where to start, as it is all important.
| 
| Do you feel that a format like Amos' tutorial is the best one?  Or a
| bunch of sample products?  Or a reference guide?
`-----

You'll probably get 500 different opinions on this (if you get a response
from all 315 readers of the Zope list). My opinion is that once you have
a good set of baseline docs that 1) describe the theory and process
and 2) offer reference material for necessary methods/variables, you should
concentrate on examples. I've always found it much easier to get
going with something if I've got access to examples that do similar things
to what I'm trying to accomplish. Over time, my understanding will
improve and I'll be able to do more complex things more gracefully, but
at least I was able to make things work from the get-go.

At this point, I'm inclined to say that the baseline documentation is
there and is pretty good. I'd love to see a lot more examples. I think
the idea of including a bunch of examples in the default DB is
a great one.

Having the DTML source on the Zope site has helped. If it is trivial
to do, you could make the <!--#var --> tags show up as links to
the source for that object. That would make it easier for people to get
to the sidebar code, for example. (This is not something I'd spend a lot
of time on though, because I'm sure other people can cut and paste 
into the URL as easily as I can :)

I also think that once some of the Zone code starts coming out,
people will start getting all sorts of new ideas and will be able
to learn a lot from that code.

Kevin

-- 
Kevin Dangoor
kid@ans.net / 734-214-7349