[Zope] Re: [Zope-dev] RE: [Zope] Barriers to Zope popularity: Part 1: wysiwig editing wysiwig editing

[Michael Hirsch]

Martijn Pieters writes:
 > At 03:50 23/09/99 , Dody Gunawinata wrote:
 > >I think "DOCUMENTATION" is more than anything else, the greatest barrier
 > >to people using Zope.
 > >Probably Zope is too powerful for its own good. You've got this tons of
 > >features that you can exploit,
 > >so much of good thing, but there is currently no document that actually
 > >guides a beginner gently and hides
 > >the more advance features from them.

As a new zope user I agree with you.
 
 [snip]

 > >Much of the documentation is designed with *advance* developers in mind.
 > >It's time for Zope for Dummies.

I've thought a lot about that.  I'd rather have something a little
less "dumbed down" than that, but something lower level would be nice.

 > Zope was designed for Web Application Developers, not designers. The 
 > documentation follows this design. I actually feel that dummies should stay 
 > away from Zope. Frontpage is for dummies.

This reminds me of the annoying attitude of many Linux users: "It
should be difficult to use--let's not make it easy for beginners."  As
long as the power of the tool is not reduced, making things easy is
always good.

In this case, Dody was speaking of documentation.  The documentation
assumes an awful lot and is poorly organized.  Suppose someone were to
write a book on Zope and DTML--say a good users manual, complete to
introduction to the syntax and a decent explanation of inheritance and
probably a short intro to python, too.  How would this detract from
your experience?  It would just make Zope easier for developers to get
started.  Is this bad?

You can't have a successful product and only let experienced users
play.  Every experienced user starts out inexperienced.  Zope is such
an unusual paradigm that very few designers are going to come in with
a strong intuitive understanding of it.  

 > As far as DTML editing goes: DTML was designed to put a face on the 
 > application, not so much as to be used on its own. DTML is very powerful 
 > for this, but its features also make it unsuitable for WISYWIG editing.

I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I fail to see any relevance to
the question at hand.  Documentation and WYSIWYG editing are
orthogonal.  One can have either without the other.

-- 
--Michael