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

Jay, Dylan djay@lucent.com
Fri, 24 Sep 1999 11:41:29 +1000


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Martijn Pieters [mailto:mj@antraciet.nl]
> Sent: Thursday, September 23, 1999 22:09
> To: Dody Gunawinata; Phil Harris
> Cc: Jay, Dylan; zope@zope.org; zope-dev@zope.org
> Subject: [Zope] Re: [Zope-dev] RE: [Zope] Barriers to Zope popularity:
> Part 1: wysiwig editing wysiwig editing
> 
> >Much of the documentation is designed with *advance* 
> developers in mind.
> >It's time for Zope for Dummies.
> >
> >Dody
> 
> What many people forget here is that Zope is a Web 
> Application Platform. It 
> is, first and foremost, designed as a framework for applications.
> 
> All the DTML Methods and Folder objects and whatnot, are 
> standard objects 
> to help you design an interface, they are part of and build 
> upon the Zope 
> framework. Together with the ZODB, security, the web interface, the 
> marshalling of variable types and RDBMS integration, Zope 
> makes one heck of 
> a Web Application Platform.
> 
> 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.

I disagree. I believe the ideal place Zope could end up is as being
something that was as simple to use as frontpage and as powerful as ... well
as it already is. I'm not saying that the "simpler" users should be able to
as powerfull things as "programmer" type users can but it should not be
unaccessable to them. They should be able to edit and add basic documents. I
don't want to be the only one who does all the editing of documents with
zope.
I think the solution I suggested with embedding the DTML inside an expanded
(rendered?) document is very workable. It would allow a novice user to edit
a DTML document that is potentially in many parts without destroying the
DTML.