[Zope] newbie advice

[sam gendler]

Ok, Gitte has come across a variety of problems commonly experienced by new users.  I thought I
would post somebits of advice for the newbies on the list, especially those who are perhaps not
used to dealing with open source code.

1. It is worth your while to postpone starting your project for the several hours it takes to go
through the Zope book.  Apparently, you should also read chapter 3 of Dieter's book.

The Zope book is available at http://www.zope.org/Members/michel/ZB
Dieter's chapter is available at http://www.dieter.handshake.de/pyprojects/zope/book/chap3.html

2.  Most, if not all downloadable products have a README file or an INSTALL file that describe how
to get them running. It is important to check this file, as sometimes it is necessary to import
files through the web interface, orcompile C code before a product will work

3.  ALWAYS include the traceback of your error when you are posting to the list.  In 90% of cases,
people will not be able to help you unless they know what specific error you have.  Failing to
include the traceback just introduces a mailing list round trip latency while we all send you
email requesting the traceback.  In the rare instances where people can help without the
traceback, it is because the problem occurs often.  In that case, you should have found it in the
searchable mailing list archive.

4. Always perform a brief search of the mailing list archive at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/zope  Don't kill youself trying to discover the answer yourself, but
it does show respect to those of us who spend a considerable amount of our time reading and
responding to the mailing list, if you try to solve your problems yourself.

5.  you might get a quicker response from the IRC channel.  I have never used it, so I cannot
comment.  You will find info on the zope.org website.

6.  There is a TON of documentation at http://www.zope.org, and lots of other resources linked to
from that site.  Check out (not surprisingly) the Documentation and Resources sections of the
site.

7.  It is supposedly not a requirement, but you will never be a Zope power user without, at least,
some basic python skills.  Read through the tutorial linked from http://www.python.org/doc/ It
will only take a couple of hours, and will clarify a LOT of syntax that you will see inside Zope.
Quite frankly, I don't know why people keep insisting that you don't need to know python.  Really,
you do.  You need to know it because it is cool, hip, nifty, and USEFUL.

8. Read the mailing lists.  Don't just use them to ask questions, read the list religiously.  You
will learn lots by seeing how others' problems are solved.  Also, you will remember if someone
else hasposted about your problem, and you will have more success finding answers in the archives.

I hope that others on this mailing list will contribute to this list of newbie advice (advii?),
and maybe someone can post it somewhere where newbie's might even find it...

--sam

--
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"The computer can't tell you the emotional story.
 It can give you the exact mathematical design, but
 what's missing is the eyebrows."
                                       --Frank Zappa