[Zope] Zope Front door thoughts

[Jason Cunliffe]

Message: 28 
[snip]
> I'd like to suggest we should all, as a community, take a fresh look at 
> the front door on the Zope web site and suggest improvements to make 
> sure that new prospective users can get an *immediate* grasp of Zope's 
> unique "selling" propositions.
This is a very, very important thread to me. I'm looking for two 
things:
o What questions should the Zope.org home page, and pages 
one click away, answer?
o What are some effective ways to answer those questions?
--Paul

hmmm...jumping in here...

In the zope lightbulb department, I detect two main cognitive problems and
several syntactic/presentation ones:

1. zope = zen object publishing environment. You have to do it to get it.
And the more you do the more you get it.. This makes it difficult to
explain because there is a dynamic process implicit in re-use, development,
adaptation etc. But most textual presentations, no matter how lucid they
are, do not capture or convey very well the dynamic nature of either the
problem or the solution. 

Anyone who has been there, done that for a while (even a very short while)
'gets' something others don't because they have an built up an experience
of the way in which these tools can help one _think differently about the
problem, and also they know the momentum gained from _working with them. It
is not just faster to do stuff this way, it is better smarter nicer.
Quality of life issue in a sense.

2. Relativistics - 
As I see it the nature of zope is that object structures work in two
directions by hierarchical ordering and by acquisition. I find the term
'Acquisition' is both annoying an misleading name. the The word implies
some commercial exchange, but if I have understood it correctly, the
metaphor is much closer to the idea of genetics and how genetic traits are
affecting by the dynamic conditions of the environment. That the context of
some zope DTML code can change its _behavior_ I belive is the key, but on
the surface [read FRONT page} this is not so evident. Because zope depends
upon a relativistic object model it makes it hard to explain unless one has
some experience. 


The nature of all relativistic explanations is that they depend upon
dynamic subjective personal point of view - To take a favorite example of
mine - giving someone precise coordinates or a map with a red line showing
the route options. As opposed to telling them: " go down the street and
then turn left after the traffic lights. .. When you get the bend in the
road, cross over and ask anyone there which is the zope.org cafe..."  

Both approaches are valuable., The overview and the headsup relative model.
The web and the web object model is tantalizingly relativistic. There is no
map yet and perhaps never could be. Yet zope zen says if the web were built
out of these kind of objects it could perhaps map itself. zope objects are
like little piece so this maps but as yet there is no map for zope itself...

"If you don't know where you are going, you might just end up somewhere
else" - Yogi Bera

<DTML-PROPOSAL: Make a set of animated zope 'map' to visualize the system
and its use.>

What would perhaps really help people understand zope is an animated map
conveying the relativistic nature as well as the structural and functional
key components. the zope.ORG front page is singularly lacking in visual
anything. Yes nice simple stripped down functional site, but zope requires
a very spatial/logical understanding. And these concepts may be more
clearly presented initially using some dynamic spatial metaphors.  
[hint1: try modelling it on a napkin, and then again with Macromedia Flash]
{hint2: try modelling it schematically in Zope but splitting the screen
horizontally say with HTML above and DTML below simultaneously  or make a
simple DTML where a rollover or click() event swaps or expands the DTML to
its HTML result. 

Yes one effective 'message' of the zope.org site is not_hype, not_'flash'
but another is that is yet another brillaint tool beloved by cool
programmers but which is not exmplainable or presnedtable to
non-programmers. You can list features till your are blue in the face, but
that won't help some people, especially when ther are soem paradigm dhifts
involved. And if they are not programmers, perhaps you need to consider
prallel techniques or media to get the message across.

Zope is part of the invisble magic of the web. What you see is not what you
did WYSINWYD. And there are two audiences or processes - visible and
invisible. The relationshuips betwren these needs to be made clearer - by
text and by illustration . 

Q: When the key developers of Zope and its ancestral components were
thrashing this stuff out, did they whiteboard or brainstorm on napkins? If
so what did they draw? And if they did'nt but you have lunch today, what
will you sketch to explain zope?

As for the overview, what would the indispensable ZOPE POSTER look like?
Perhaps that is a FRONT DOOR ITEM. Perhaps the poster is a sort of
flattened all menus exposed type of animated movie. 

Zope is highly interactive - by design, concept, practice and by result -
but there is nothing on the front door which expresses this yet.. Except
for the crucial fact this community is very busy learning and doing it!

In general the nature between play, learning and design has been officially
undermined for many years. OOPS has been threatening to restore respect for
these essential creative human actions, but always seems to get bogged down
in jargon and technology. Zope is brilliant because it does let one play
around with idea, the tools and the structure, learn, and thus iterative
design further and better. 

PATTERNS
A potential major breakthrough is this dilemma, has been the rend towards
Design Patterns - the adoption by oops programmers of Christopher
Alexander's inspiring architectural philosophy. In fact Zope DTML has the
beginnings of a very friendly design pattern language. I can easily imagine
a ground breaking book on 'Creative Problem Solving and Design Patterns
Zope'. 

Hope something here makes sense to you. 
Best wishes 

- Jason Cunliffe  

-------------------------------------------------
Jason Cunliffe  <jasonic@nomadicsltd.com>
NOMADICS.STUDIO(Design Director)
Geo-Digital Arts and Technology
Le Vieux Moulin,  Route de Mons
83440  SEILLANS,  FRANCE
Tel: +33 (0)4 94.76.98.72    
Fax: +33 (0)4 94.76.97.77