[Zope] ZPT tutorial

[John Poltorak]

On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 03:15:33PM -0400, Paul Winkler wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 07:29:20PM +0100, John Poltorak wrote:
> re. zopelabs.com:
> 
> > It probably is very useful, but I know I'd get hopelessly lost because 
> > there is just so much stuff on it.
> 
> So you prefer to ignore it?

Just how much time should you spend on something when you are deriving no 
benefit just increasing frustration?

 
> Granted, zopelabs.com has flaws. It's harder to find stuff than it
> should be.  Nevertheless, browsing that site, along with reading the
> Zope book (the old print version), was instrumental in getting me from
> knowing nothing, to the point where I became a full-time zope developer.
> We didn't even have the great resource of zopewiki.org back then.
> Use that too, zopewiki is your friend.
> There are tons of good links from http://zopewiki.org/PageTemplates

Thanks. I'll check that.
> 
> In general, I don't know how you expect to make any progress when your
> typical response to the (many) suggestions you receive on this list is
> "I can't read that, it's too much work".

If I spend a couple of days on something and make no progress, I'd say 
it's 'too much work'. Wouldn't you.

I was on a course over the weekend where ordinary people in their 70's 
with no technical ability were knocking together websites in just a few 
hours with no prior training and no understanding of the 
underlying concepts involved. Why should Zope be just as easy?

 
> > Most of the newbie stuff about macros 
> > is probably quite old by now so I doubt whether I'd find it with a 
> > sequential browse through the Cookbook. 
> 
> "probably"? "doubt"? 
> 
> > It's disappointing to find that the link from Newbies under the ZOPE 
> > section does not function.
> 
> True that. I don't know what happened to zopenewbies.net.
>  
> > What I really need is something like a ZPT macro which defines a header 
> > and footer and leaves a slot in the middle for my own content. I don't  
> > expect to be able to write my own macro for quite a while - too many 
> > pitfalls... I'm not even sure is that is how I should be approaching 
> > writing a home page.
> 
> Have you tried the tutorial that comes with Zope?
> It includes at least one simple example of macros - see lesson 4.
> 
> Not sure how to run the tutorial?  The default index_html for a new Zope 
> server tells you:
> 
> """There is a built-in interactive Zope Tutorial which gets you started
> with some simple tasks using the Zope managment interface. To use the
> tutorial, go to any Folder and select Zope Tutorial from the add list
> and click the Add button. Provide a name for the tutorial and click Add
> to begin working with the tutorial.
> """

There is a quantum leap between the tutorial and being able to do anything 
useful with a website. What the tutorial needs to to handhold you through 
putting together something like the homepage of zope.org.
 
> -- 
> 
> Paul Winkler
> http://www.slinkp.com


-- 
John