[Zope] Re: [ZPT] ZPT advocacy

[Peter Bengtsson]

Feedback on http://www.zope.org/Members/vallen2/

It was easy to read because you shine of enthusiasm and optimism. That's
good, and this is the kind of text you want to send when you send propaganda
to a prospective client.

But it's easier for me to complain so I'll do that.
It's alot of "me" and "I". That's alright, but is the article about you or
Zope as a basis product for a developing Buiness plan?

Your conclusion in the begining of the text summorizes: "Zope is all about a
framework
for rapid Web-application creation and maintenance."
The work "rapid" weights heavly in that sentence. Maybe you should get back
to that later in detail.
It is the same conclusion I use a lot when I'm describing Zope.
I say "Using Zope, you'll get more for your money because everything is so
prepared for you. If you know what you want, you can save money by using
Zope"

"Rapid creation and maintenence" also means "less bucks"; but maybe we
should leave the conclusion about what "rapid" means to people who apply it.

One thing that I thing you should mention more about content management
systems and so on is that when you install Zope you get ACLUsers, Lots of
permissions, Basic Authentication (well tested),
encompassed-management-view-per-permissions and options to fully customize
and control login (LDAP, MySQL UserFolder, NT Userfolder etc)
These are things that are taken for granted in Zope. And in the ASP/JSP/PHP
world systems that "approach" the security whole of Zope cost thousands of
pounds for companies.
I've seen new media agencies build impressive content management systems for
wellpaying large companies, but when I look at their content management
system I think that they can be built in zope in 30 minutes by mastering the
www.zope.org/Products page.

Business is a lot about money. And this is one of Zope's strongest
strengths, by just like you're saying being rapid. More on that please.

Nothing more for moment.

Well done.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Andreas Vallen" <vallen@gmx.net>
To: <zpt@zope.org>
Sent: Monday, May 28, 2001 2:03 PM
Subject: [ZPT] ZPT advocacy


> Hi,
>
> I've recently had an exchange with Peter Bengtsson about
> his nice ZPT/DTML - comparison page.
>
> Now he alerted me to the existence of a ZPT-mailing list and
> here I am.
> [Notice to evan: please mention the list under
> http://www.zope.org/Resources/MailingLists as that's where
> I and probably others have looked].
>
> I would like to draw your attention to that
> kind of business plan (pamphlet?) I hacked last night.
> While its premier aim is finding a way to do a business
> based on Zope, it contains some amount of ZPT-advocacy
> as well.
>
> And ZPT can use any support it can muster. So here's
> the relevant part. Head over to
> http://www.zope.org/Members/vallen2/ for the whole
> thing. If anyone thinks he can use it for propaganda ;-) do!
>
> see you,
> Andreas
>
>
> ---- start of excerpt
>
> ...
> (2) The second major problem we have is the separation of content, logic
and
> presentation.
>
> "Long before solved" one should think regarding the wealth of supposedly
> "Model-View-Controller" patterns in the application server domain: ASP,
PHP,
> JSP and DTML.
>
> Not true! Most of you will know it: Above mentioned templating mechanisms
> while better than Perl-cgiing at their time of birth have introduced their
> own plethora of problems. In fact it were the same old ones: Logic inside
> presentation.
> While it is impossible to edit a cgi-script with a WYSIWYG-editor editing
> these templates is not a pleasant experience either - if at all possible.
> I as a Java-devotee have of course taken delight in JSP - until I used it
too
> much. I have not coded in the other above mentioned templating languages
(not
> even DTML), but I know for sure that the result is the same:
>
> They leave a hell of a mess.
>
> But good we have DC. Apart of creating our platform, one of the advantages
of
> having a commercial "mother" as an open-source community is that they
often
> better sense the shortcomings of the platform regarding its use by people
not
> being fluent in all the languages of choice at any given moment (e.g.
DTML).
>
> And I assume that no designer wants to see or even learn
> "dtmlmethod(_.None,_)". God - not even I want to see something like this.
But
> I think I have to: I'm a coder.
> So what did DC do?
>
> Short: they created the ultimate weapon. The solution. The thing that made
me
> think my business idea is feasible, no: damned to success:Page Templates
>
> I'm not in a mood to explain them. Just go to the ZPT site. Simply know
that
> they are a groundbreaking mechanism to separate logic, content and
> presentation in such a way that page-designers can reliably edit their
> dynamic pages inside any WYSIWYG-editor without having any problems.
>
> Contrast this to any(!) other of the established templating mechanisms
which
> will make these editors terribly confused and unusable, what is quite sure
> your fate if you don't happen to speak the language of the tools' company
> (Microsoft: ASP!, even Macromedia may cease support for anything but CFML
> from Allaire Coldfusion (whom they bought) and JSP: Think about choice Mr.
> IT-manager! No one got ever fired for choosing choice! ;-) )
>
> In some way the content<->logic separation is even better accomplished by
> XMLC (a separation mechanism employed by the java application server
> "Enhydra"), which ZPT was inspired by, but enhydra XMLC lacks other
crucial
> features which in my opinion second it.
>
> I try to advertise ZPT because I feel many seasoned developers shun this
new
> technology. Even DC seems to be afraid of saying DTMLers: "Stop coding
DTML.
> There's something new in town and it is vastly superior!" Understandable -
> given the fact that zopistas like too hack and ZPT superficially (ok ...
> really - but only a bit) seems to have less expressiveness.
>
> But that's the same the new Python Scripts are also all about: Stop
enmeshing
> logic and content!
> The results are more but rewarding and as I said enabling my business -
> because they tackle our second problem: separating the logic from the
content.
> ...
>
> --- end of excerpt
>
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