[Zope] Re: [ZDP] Re: [Zope] The agony of the ZOPE Documentation

[Alan Shutko]

Maik Roeder <roeder@berg.net> writes:

> Do think that the basic idea of offering different portals for
> different communities (Beginners, Developers and so on) is a bad
> idea ? What do you think about the organisation in Subjects/Topics ?

Well, as a brand-spanking new user (or user wannabe, if I can get the
tutorial to run), I think that offering portals at all is a bad
thing.  I want information, not hoops to jump through to get
information.  Part of this is that I don't really like portals much in
general, but a large part of it is that when I have problems, I go
looking for information to solve those problems, and I don't want to
have to guess where something would be filed (kind of hard when you
don't know much).  The current portal segments information based on
what kind of "user" you are, but in reality, my problems involve
information which might be found in many places, and I have to dig
through all of them to find out where.

It might be better if all information were contained in all portals,
but organized differently.  Right now, as a "new user & developer" I
have a portal that's empty... not even a link to the faq!  That's a
big help!

> This is a job that only DC can do right now. The ZDP has "only" got
> the aim to point to existing stuff. Restructuring the existing docs
> is not our job.

Well, why is it called the Zope Documentation Project, if it's not
supposed to provide documentation?  Oh, wait... it's not, I guess.  I
hadn't looked at the title on http://zdp.zope.org before, but the link
at http://www.zope.org/Documentation says it's project (and a source
of documentation). 

> What documentation do you mean ? 

Well, there's the Zope Book project which requires lots of clicking
(and it took me a little while to figure out that there was actually
content on the sub-sections, because the interface changed on me).
Personally, I haven't gotten any further, because I just started.

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
170 days, 17 hours, 37 minutes, 27 seconds till we run away.
Your mind understands what you have been taught; your heart, what is true.