[Zope] What product to choose?

[David Pratt]

Hi Karlo. Just a few thoughts... I think you would be wise to choose 
Zope2 for the moment if you feel CMF is the best fit since it is tried 
and true. Also due to availability of getting help or availability of 
documentation if your time is tight. I have been developing with Zope2 
for almost three years and I am still learning things all the time. I 
have not been let down by any lack of capabilility other than some more 
pythonic ways of working and interacting with relational databases. Just 
to give you an idea from activity on mailing lists since Dec 9 (from my 
mail system)

Plone 1778
Zope 557
Zope3 287
TurboGears 2827
Django 1222
CherryPy 184

I can't say that I feel Zope2 is outdated or a dead end as there is a 
CMF 1.6 and a CMF 2.0 release on the horizon for Zope2. In fact, I feel 
if anything Zope2 has been revitalized with Five development and there 
is no need to feel that it is anything less that a solid and proven 
framework. Sometimes I have to resist the temptation to jump to the 
latest and greatest since swimming in a pool of uncertainty can be 
troublesome.

My opinion is that you can have the best of both worlds for some 
significant time before there is a Zope3 CMF equivalent. When that 
happens, it should be easier with Five to migrate (and there ought to be 
more in common).

There are also some other popular frameworks that have a shorter 
learning curve like TurboGears, Django or even CherryPy with active 
communities if you are on a tight time line (that work nicely with 
relational database backends) I guess it will depend on your choice of a 
backend - whether you want an object database or relational database.

Regards,
David

Karlo Lozovina wrote:
> First of all, greetings to everyone :)!
> 
> I have been given a task to choose appropriate software for developing
> two projects, that is - web pages. I'm quite familiar with many
> software products available out there, but I don't have the time to
> thoroughly test each one and then decide which one to use. So, this is
> the place where you guys come in - I will briefly as possible describe
> specifications of both projects and I would like to hear from you what
> would be the best platform to implement both projects.
> 
> First one is something like a mathematical encyclopedia and online
> collaboration tool - mix between MathWorld
> (http://mathworld.wolfram.com/) and a Wiki of some kind
> (http://www.wikipedia.org).
> 
> The most important feature is this: users must be able to edit
> documents using syntax similar to LaTeX (no WYSIWYG-like editor),
> because after all web will contain a lot's of math formulas and
> expressions, and most of the users are already accustomed with
> (La)TeX. There is a similar implementation in LatexWiki
> (http://mcelrath.org/Notes/LatexWiki), addon for ZWiki, which is Zope 2
> based, but I haven't tested that one out so I can't really say is that
> exactly what I need.
> 
> Second most important feature is that of interconnections of articles -
> for example: when I define and write let's say Pitagora's theorem, I
> want to be able to "include" (much like C's #include <>, and Python's
> import something) into other documents. This way all the material can
> be defined in central repository and broken into small pieces
> (theorems, proofs, tasks...) and then reorganized as needed.
> 
> Second web is much less complicated - it's intended to be a mix between
> news portal and searchable database of medical and similar products.
> 
> Currently, I'm reviewing few options for implementing those two
> projects - plain Zope 2 or a Zope 2 based CMS (Plone, ZWiki, etc). If
> there is a Zope 2 based CMS that satisfies most of my requirements, I
> wouldn't mind using that. But, since Zope 2 will be someday replaced by
> Zope 3, I'm not that happy to use an already outdated product. That
> brings me to my next question - would it be smart to try to develop
> this using Zope 3? Is it mature and production ready enough?
> There is a third possibility, try to do it from scratch using Python
> (since that is the only language I'm good in that is suited for web
> development), but that seems like to big hassle.
> 
> I'm mostly biased forwards Zope 3, since it's quite a new product with
> (I hope :>) bright future - i'm just not sure someone with zero Zope
> knowledge (although, I know Python quite well) can develop both
> projects in under a half a year.
> 
> There, that's all I can think of now, any thoughts, ideas, URL's are
> very much appreciated.
> 
> Thank you in advance.
>