[Zope] - Suggestions for Zope 1.9.0

Wed, 27 Jan 1999 11:03:27 -0500

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Disclaimer: I do not speak for my employer. They do not even support Linux.
Not yet.

Table of Contents.
1.- Overall impression.
2.- Positioning.
3.- Workspace improvements.
4.- Good to have.

- - - - -

1.- Overall impression.

a.) Awesome product! I am a Linux newbie, and the product is really nice.

b.) The ocumentation (installation and initial configuration) *needs* to be
improved from just a set of dysfunctional README.txt and WEBSERVER.txt
files scattered all over the place.

c.) For those interested, I have compiled a step-by-step set of
instructions for installing Zope on a Linux box, along with the PyGreSQLDA.
The file is available in PDF format. The document is still in draft form,
but it's usable.

- - - - -

2.- Positioning.

a.) Zope's website states that: "Zope is a free, open source web
application platform used for building high-performance, dynamic web
sites." That definition, IMHO, is not even close to what Zope is. Plus, it
is a very dry, unattractive Marketing one-liner. No offense intended, but
it certainly looks like a site by nerds and for nerds.

b.) It took me a week of playing with Zope (installed under both NT Server
4.0 and Red Hat Linux 5.2) and reading the manuals before I started to
understand the magnitude of Zope's power. And I am still not done exploring
its features. This is not a good thing for potential new users who are not
hard-core techies.

c.) I would suggest positioning Zope as a web-based, FrontPage-like web
development environment that does NOT require the user / creator to have
any software locally on his PC. Using Zope, anybody with access to a PC and
the network (Intra / Internet) can publish their own website by using
Zope's formatting / structural capabilities. "You focus on the art and the
content, and Zope will handle all the nitty-gritty for you." Or something
like that. Sell the sizzle, not the steak. People will not likely buy Zope
because it's OpenSource, or because it's written in Python. Corporations
will buy Zope because it allows non-programmer users to get their job done
faster, cheaper, and with less hand-holding from the corporation's MIS / IT
crowd.

d.) Furthermore, Zope allows for the creation of web-enabled,
database-driven applications from a web browser. That is, no more grudgery
writing ODBC stuff and such. This product could find a serious following
among the corporate crowd: techies define the ODBC links to the corporate
databases, and then Joe Schmuck writes his / her own web-based queries to
the databases using Zope, and then publishes the results to the corporate
Intranet.

e.) Yes, I _know_ most of the issues above are already discussed in Zope's
website. If only after you go over the Zope Features, Questions and
Answers, Zope Components, Zope Zen Revealed, and Testimonials sections.
What I am saying is summarizing all of those benefits in one paragraph,
maximum.

f.) Web presence providers should love this product for their users. Using
Zope to design and maintain a website is much better than using FrontPage
and then dealing with the broken links and upload hassles! With Zope the
user can backtrack when he deletes some portion of his site. With
FrontPage, what's gone is gone.

g.) I know, you guys tremble at the mention of comparing Zope with
FrontPage. But, hey, in Marketing you need to consider the issue of
educating your prospective customers. Instead of wasting time and resources
educating the marketplace on what an "open source web application platform"
is, why not piggyback on the widely known concept of what FrontPage is? The
Bill has already spent millions of bucks promoting what a FrontPage-like
app us supposed to do. So, let's take that and build a Zope definition on
top of the pre-existing, widely-known FrontPage definition.

h.) Buried on page 24 of the Principia manager's Guide we find the
following text, which I suggest should be on Zope's main page:

"Netscape Publishing
Traditional websites often have multiple HTML files that use several
different graphics files. For those based on the Netscape web browser
version 3 or later, there exists a capability to publish a website from the
content manager
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=92s desktop machine to the production website.

This is advantageous for several reasons. First, since Netscape is the =
most
common medium for browsing, content managers have standardized on Netsc=
ape
for authoring. Next, the target market for Netscape=92s authoring envir=
onment
is the novice, thanks to its graphical presentation of web editing.
Finally, Netscape conveniently lets you publish an entire directory of
files, rather than one at a time.

Since Principia also targets the content manager, it would make sense t=
o
let the content manager manage his content using Netscape authoring too=
ls.
This section describes how to use Netscape publishing with Principia."

- - - - -

3.- Workspace improvements.

a.) Add the size and date of last update for each file listed.

b.) When in the "View" tab, there are no tabs on top. The user needs to=
 hit
the Back arrow. This is consufing and inconsistent with the rest of the=

tabs' functionality.

- - - - -

4.- Good to have.

a.) A full, Python-based HTML editor to create/edit HTML files via Zope=
. I
think there are some options out there already. It's just a matter of
integrating the code into Zope. One of those options is HTMLgen. Curren=
tly
found at http://starship.skyport.net/lib.html this library of classes
mirrors the HTML 3.2 markup elements.

- - - - -

That's all, folks. Keep up the good work.

Jose C. Lacal, Senior Engineer, Data Services
Siemens Information and Communication Networks
900 Broken Sound Parkway; A2 - Boca Raton, FL 33487
Voice: +1 (561) 955-3081 - Fax: +1 (561) 955-6500
Text page http://www.skytel.com/Paging/1way.html
PIN # 1258390  -  jose.lacal@icn.siemens.com
=

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