[Zope] Which docs am I missing?
Stefan Hoffmeister
Stefan.Hoffmeister@Econos.de
Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:06:00 +0200
It seems as if I am missing quite a bit of documentation. I have
DTML, ZAG, ZCMG, ZDG
(just the archive names) and tried to read about everything that is
relevant to "plain" DTML (seems to be limited to DTML, ZCMG).
But then I run into
"Zope Quick Reference"
which is quite massive and all very fine - the problem just is: where is
the more elaborate counter-part to this *quick* reference, with all the
explanations?
Essentially I am looking for documentation on "techniques" - ways of how
to do things. Now, there are quite a few of HOWTOs. But unfortunately most
of these HOWTOs appear to demonstrate higher-level concepts.
Take, for instance,
<dtml-with Images>
<dtml-in "objectValues(['Image'])">
<dtml-var sequence-item>
</dtml-in>
</dtml-with>
which I found in the archives for this mailing list. Given the current
"official" documentation, how could I have found out an explanation of
what
<dtml-in "objectValues(['Image'])">
does (ignoring the problem of how to find objectValues)? The only place I
have found "objectValues" mentioned is
"For example, to display all sub-objects of a folder, the objectValues
method may be used (figure 13)."
Sure, so what? What's this "Image" thing? Apparently it is an index into a
Python list which returns a list of all images in the current folder? Name
space? What else is there? Well, the "Entire Zope FAQ" (FAQ!) says
"You can however, specify a list of object metatypes that it should
return. objectValues(['DTML Document']) will only return all DTML Document
objects in a Folder. Other metatypes you could select on are: Folder, DTML
Method, File, Image, Mail Host, User Folder and Session."
Do you see my problem? When I *have* something, I can *backtrack* this to
at least some bits and pieces of information - although the only way to
find it is a grep, which is as brute-force as it can be. But where is the
documentation that "looks forward", that helps me to find out how to write
"original" code? Reverse-engineering may be fun, but it's a bit
time-consuming for my taste?
Thanks for any pointers!