[Zope] Using Zope

[Joel Burton]

On Thu, 19 Jul 2001, Andreas Jung wrote:

> 
> > > I've been given the task of exploring the use of Zope for a department
> that we support.  I have just been going through some of the manuals and
> online documentation.  The creation of pages seems very basic and
> understandable from my viewpoint.  However, the material I have found
> doesn't seem to address the use of Zope by non-HTML/basic scripting literate
> people (or at least how to develope a framework for non-web literate people
> to use).  The department that we have in mind couldn't tell a <p> tag from
> an <ol> tag.  They have only ever used a WYSIWYG interface.  My question is,
> does anyone know where I can find information or a "tutorial" on how to
> create a framework like this?  So that your average secretary can just
> update the actual text of the page much like in a WYSIWYG editor fashion?
> Or are we better suited by a different product?
> 
> A suitable solution might be to use Zope together with ZopePageTemplates
> (see http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/ZPT1 for an introduction).
> ZPT have the advantage that Zope specific stuff is "hidden" in additional
> attributes inside the HTML tags and HTML editors usually don't care about
> them
> and non-technical people like layouters can work on the pages without
> seeing the additional stuff. E.g. Adobe GoLive works pretty fine with Zope
> and ZPT.

For some people on the list, some background might help:

You don't have to use ZPT (a fairly new Zope technology) to get
Dreamweaver-designed pages on the web. Just use regular ol' HTML
and things work peachy.

However, often you want to mix someone else's design with some server
logic. Like a page that lists all the shoes you sell: it would have some
graphics at the top, a description about your shoe company, and a list
of your shoes. In most systems, getting Dreamweaver to not step on your
magical server-specific tags isn't too hard. However, getting it so that
your page layout designer can actually design the table while still having
it come dyanamically is tricky.

ZPT allows you to use 100% pure HTML, while still getting access to Zope's
dynamic server stuff. Pure 110% roundtrip stuff. Really neat.

However, if you want people to design pretty, static pages for a site, you
won't need ZPT.

-- 
Joel Burton   <jburton@scw.org>
Director of Information Systems, Support Center of Washington