[Zope] Docs

[Neil Burnett]

For me the most valuable things to read about a new (to me) software tool
are detailed walkthrough examples. The incredibly simple one in the Zope
documentation showing how to set up a web site with 3 userfolders was great. 

Also, many people will not be creating a Zope site from scratch, but will
be moving their site(s) to Zope. I would think guidance on how to do this
would be useful. For example, in my case, I am thinking of moving a
Frontpage web with lots of active server pages to Zope. What are the
implications? How do I handle the navigation? How do I name objects so I
can still see the relationship with the old site. Do I move my users to
Zope or give them a route via Frontpage (and how do I do that?).

I am a Zope newcomer, so have all these things to do. A book giving this
sort of advice would be invaluable.

Neil

 are At 12:29 10/04/2000 +0100, Richard Moon wrote:
>Perhaps you should start with a non-technical description of what Zope 
>does. i.e that it stores things in a database, things which can be web 
>pages but can also be more clever than that, that at the time the web page 
>is requested any dtml tags are interpreted/rendered (is that the right word 
>?) to generate the final page. I think there's a tendency for newbies to 
>think of DTML as a procedural language and forget what is actually 
>happening. Try to avoid all the OO gobblydegook - it isn't necessary at 
>this stage.
>
>I think you need a really gentle introduction to namespaces/variables with 
>lots of examples. Theres a need to explain the REQUEST variable ( a whole 
>chapter IMHO) and how form variables get lost when you move to a new 
>form,  information about passing variables to and from SQL methods, how to 
>use the _. and all the functions such as _.string. All of this backed up by 
>real-world examples (starting easy and getting more complex). Using 
>variables within dtml-let and dtml-with tags. The focus should be on 'how 
>do I do xyz' (eg how do I take user input, check it was entered properly, 
>upshift it, concatenate it with a constant and insert it into a database) 
>not what a particular tag does.
>
>Can I say that the book I would most like you to emulate would be the HTML 
>4.0 Sourcebook by Ian S Graham. No computer science, just what you really 
>need to know.
>
>Can I suggest that you make no assumptions about the previous languages the 
>reader has.  Please don't assume they have Python or C or Java or Perl or 
>anything. I would imagine you have to assume a basic grasp of HTML and web 
>servers etc, and of course when you talk about SQL methods and Python 
>methods you don't want to be teaching them those languages.
>
>Good luck !
>
>Richard
>
>
>At 17:31 07/04/00 +0200, you wrote:
>>Hi,
>>
>>I'm going to (try!) to write a small book on Zope. I hear people
>>complaining a lot about the documentation with Zope. I'm all ears to hear
>><snip>
>>Regards, Tom.
>
>
>Richard Moon
>richard@dcs.co.uk
>
>
>_______________________________________________
>Zope maillist  -  Zope@zope.org
>http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope
>**   No cross posts or HTML encoding!  **
>(Related lists - 
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce
> http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
>