[Zope] A Couple of Suggestions...

[Harry]

I've been diving into some Zope lately, mostly via discovery of the
Squishdot product, and have been facing the usual glee and frustration of
discovering a new, cool product.

Zope, as an environmnet, is definitely cool, and has a lot of potential to
aid in quick Web Application deploymen. There also seems to be a healthy
amount of enthusiasm, judging by the new Products that keep getting added to
the Products list.

Ironically, it is this Product list which is also the source of my biggest
gripe, which is, in essence, a decisive lack of proper documentation for
most of the products - and it seems that documnetation is a big weak point
of the whole Zope environment at this stage. Yeah, I know about the ZDP, and
the HOWTOs, but they all deal with Zope, not the specific products.

Let me illustrate with a list of the specific products I've been playing
with so far, and the relative troubles I've been having.

ZOPE: Thanks to Jeff Rush's RPMs, installation was a snap, and took a whole
of 10 minutes to get started. Getting Zope to work with PCGI/Apache took a
bit longer, but Jeff has been very helpful, and very patient in helping me
get the system configured. He should also be commended for his very detailed
documentation and helpfiles on his site.

NotMail: No instructions on the Zope products page, no instructions on how
to use once installed. No instructions on how to access and/or customize.
It's installed, sure, but that's about it. Any additional information I had
to literally hunt down, finding outdated links, and not a single reference
to a working, installed product. Wrote to the author, and have recived no
response. I've pretty much given up on this one

TinyTable: Installed like a charm, mostly since besides the intial untaring
of the package, nothing else needed to be done.

Squishdot: Installed easily. Works. Customization and configuration was a
bit tricky, but greatly assisted by help from the author, Bruce Perens, and
the various documentation documents on the test site. This one is working,
and I'm making great progress on using it as the underlying engine for a
project I'm working on.

ZpdfDocument: Looks like a Product that might allow to export pages in pdf
format. That's actually what it is, after unpacking and reading the
README.html file, but since the product page contains no information about
the functionality, installation, or installation I really haven't installed
it yet.

Fortune Product : Great little product. Installed. Added the tag to replace
static quote, and it worked right out of the box. Since there are no
configurations or syntax issues, this is appropriate.

Poll 0.6.4: Got it to install, yet it requires the PIL, which the Zope
product page did not explain (something that the README file explained,
which the author agreed he will place on-line). Unfortunately, PIL requires
additional libraries, which, although present ona RedHat linux system,
aren't where PIL expects them to be. So, because of this, while the Poll
product is now installed, I don't have graphics capabilities, since I gave
up on trying to hunt down nested dependent libraries.

Chameleon: Haven't tried installing it yet, but Doug has provided EXEMPLARY
documentation and installation instructions. Not only does this product
address a need, but I am actually motivated to try installation, simply
because of the documentation provided.

ZCounter: An extremely simple product, with, again, nice and detailed
instructions regarding syntax. A candidate for installation right there.

In summary, here's the suggestion on how to make the environment less
daunting to newbies, and how to make the Zope experience, in general, a more
pleasant one - danger: this would require some minimal effort on the part of
authors, but it will pay off, in the end, by a reduction in the number of
support request and 'help' e-mails you receive that you can be happy to
ignore:

* Include the README file of your product on the Zope Product page for your
product.

* Including listings of dependent libraries, or products, with links to
them.

* include syntax examples

* include installation instructions (even if you think they are
self-evident).

* include a link to a site that actually uses the product, so users can see
the product in action (I am fascinated by the fact that, apparently, NONE of
the products exhibited have found ANY use in the public areas... Seriously,
it might be useful for Zope.ORG to provide an area where the product can be
shown off.)

With the addition of the above, the Zope experience could be enhanced
ten-fold for potential zopistas.

Harry