[Zope] Zope Documentation Project (ZDP) Announcement

[Maik Roeder]

Dear Zopistas,


The Zope Documentation Project is pleased to announce the availability of
the new zdp.zope.org website, which aims to give the Zope community
an additional place for sharing knowledge, and for working together
on providing good Zope documentation. The new ZDP homepage already contains
many useful resources for the Zope community, which for the most part
complement the already existing types of documentation available on zope.org. 

We sincerely hope that Digital Creations will play an active role in
the Zope Documentation Project and help merging the existing Zope documentation
with the documentation provided via ZDP. To see what Digital Creation's Plans
for Zope Documentation are, have a look at:
http://www.zope.org/Members/Amos/Documentation/Plan

When we built the new ZDP site, great emphasis was placed on providing
ways to easily get aware of what is new on the site and to quickly get
an overview of what pieces of documentation need Maintainers, Writers,
Commenters and Reviewers. Thereby contributors are directed to the
documents and projects that need help. Everyone can contribute according
to their interest and level of experience.

We invite you to join the ZDP and to help building up a great
knowledge base on Zope. This also includes helping to customize and 
extend the ZDP-Tools, which is the software with which the ZDP site
was built and on which it runs. The ZDP-Tools are being developed 
on-site, and are completely written in DTML to allow for rapid 
through-the-web programming. Questions on the ZDP tools can either 
be directed to the ZDP mailing list or to me, as I am the ZDP-Tools
maintainer (Maik Röder, roeder@berg.net).

The most important sub-projects of the Zope Documentation Project are:

1. ZBook

   In this project, we are collaboratively writing a book about Zope.
   There are already many chapters, most of which are still drafts.
   We need feedback on these drafts, so maybe you can give some 
   comments directly on the drafts, or discuss them on the ZDP mailing
   list or directly with the author. The ZBook project is maintained 
   by Tom Deprez (tom.deprez@uz.kuleuven.ac.be). 

2. ZFAQ

   This project tries to answer the frequently asked questions on Zope.
   The project is in need of additional contributors, so if you
   have a  question on Zope, or an answer to share, then you are
   welcome to add it to the ZFAQ. If you want to help moving the old
   Zope FAQ  to the new one, then just contact Kamon Ayeva
   (kamon.ayeva@bureauveritas.com), the maintainer of the ZFAQ project.

3. ZSnippets

   Snippets are short pieces of DTML or Python code which come with a
   description of their purpose and how they work. This project is
   maintained by Rik Hoekstra (rik.hoekstra@inghist.nl), who will get
   an automatic email notification when you add a Snippet, so you are
   invited to help flooding his inbox ;-)

To become a ZDP member, write an email to the ZDP mailing list (zdp@zope.org),
and we will create an account for you. For the time being, this will give
you Manager rights on zdp.zope.org. Once we use a tool like the forthcoming
PTK Login Manager for automatically adding new members, we will have to
give more restricted access rights.

Thanks go out to Digital Creations for sponsoring the ZDP server at Codeit
Computing (http://www.codeit.com), a Zope Hosting Provider which is
kindly giving the ZDP project commercial support for an Advanced Zope
Hosting Server !

The ZDP site has not been tested under heavy load, so just in case 
you should experience down times, please report to the ZDP mailing list
at zdp@zope.org, and come back later. If you should not be able to 
reach this site under the name zdp.zope.org, try using the IP address
209.185.210.24 in the meantime.


So, you are invited to visit us at:

http://zdp.zope.org


Best Regards,

Maik Röder