Fwd: Re: [Zope] beginner

[Chris McDonough]

> > Well, that's not what Zope is trying to be, although, if it was, it's
> > already there... but I think we appreciate the sentiment. ;-)
> 
> Hmm. For me personally, Zope is a replacement for Apache + Perl - did I make
> a mistake? ;-))

No.. of course not.  Sorry.

Most of the "documentation problem" is actually a preception problem and
an organization problem.  Folks (like yourself) perceive Zope to be
"just 'this'", where 'this' is a very specific thing.  In your case,
it's a replacement for Apache and perl.  You likely expect to see things
in the docs about how to run a CGI script, how to untaint form
variables, and maybe how to hook Zope up to MySQL.

However, you need to do none of these things to use Zope.  Zope doesn't
serve CGI, you don't need to untaint formvars, and you don't need to use
a relational database to make a dynamic website using Zope.  Zope's got
its own webserver, its got its own object database.

Compound this problem with sets of folks coming to Zope from Vignette
StoryServer, from Mason, from OpenACS, and from a J2EE world.  All of
these folks have different expectations of what Zope really is, what it
does, and how it should work.

This multipurposing confuses the bejeezus out of people when they first
come to Zope, because there's no way a single set of docs could possibly
serve all of those audiences.  We'd need to write maybe four or five
different sets of documentation to service all of these audiences.  We
can't do this for financial reasons.

But people flounder aimlessly due to the disconnect and get very upset. 
Zope is different than the combination of Perl and apache (or insert
your favorite dynamic website software here), so much different that you
need to look at the problem you're attempting to solve a little
differently to apply Zope to it.  You need to get a conceptual
understanding of the object database and how methods are called on Zope
objects and lots of other stuff.  This is a liability sometimes when all
you want to do is "get it working" and you have little Zope experience. 
But I don't know of a quick fix other than pointing folks at the
appropriate docs when they ask.

- C