[Zope] Frustrated with Python and Frameworks. Zope, Grok, Django, CherryPy

[Martijn Faassen]

Hey,

On Nov 27, 2007 5:14 PM, Gregory Dudek <dudek at cim.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> I have used Zope 2 too extensively to give it up. I use it for
> several sites.
> I don't see anything I like better, but have a nagging worry that
> Zope, and especially Zope 2, may become increasingly neglected as
> time goes by.
> I hope I am wrong, but it is definitely something to be concerned about.
> All in all, I'd still recommend Zope 2 and, in fact, hope for all of
> sake of us all that lots of other people continue to make this choice.

I think it would be great if you and several like minded users of Zope
2 could get together and change this.
After all, this is an open source project, and we can actually do
something about this. It's up to us.

We want a more active Zope 2 community. What does that mean? What kind
of community activities
would you like to see? What kind of direction of development would
make you happy?

We need to identify some targets and see what resources we have to
accomplish them. Of course this shouldn't degenerate into a long
wishlist discussion, but let's see what kind of steps can be taken.

I'm in this for two reasons:

* as a developer of Grok, I'm very interested in improving the
beginner scenario for Grok and I hope to learn something from what
people like about classic Zope 2 (which I used for years myself, of
course)

* I'm (since a few weeks) chairman of the Zope Foundation board, and I
think it's an important task for the foundation to support the
community. Now I don't mean a pot of money or something, as we don't
have any, but perhaps there are a few small obstacles we can get rid
of, and a few channels of communication we can open here and there.

[snip]

> Somebody asked about what things make Zope so appealing and without
> re-listing the whole feature set, the combination of the ZMI and the
> very simple and robust through-the-web stuff, the wide selection of
> both powerful and quick-to-use script and template solutions, and a
> good selection of plugin products are the top features.

Yes, I think those are strong points of Zope 2 and those points are
currently missing in the Zope 3 world, including Grok. One
reason the ZMI is frowned on for development is because many of us has
been burned - we got trapped by the ZMI and weren't
able to use a version control system easily, our favorite editors
easily, and so on. We've thought on and off during early Zope 3
development about ways to bring back the ZMI without these
disadvantages. As Zope 3 development progressed we've not been
able to spend much time on the topic. I wouldn't expect to look at the
Zope 3 community itself to solve this problem by now, as
they're generally not very interested in it. Grok is more interested
in a beginner story, but we still are very filesystem oriented.
I wonder what could be built on top though. It'll have to be done by
interested volunteers, and that's the chicken-and-egg problem:
those who are able to do so are usually comfortable with the
filesystem mode of development and don't need these tools. Do we have
any ideas to get to chickens and/or eggs?

> Cheetah and Zope sounds like an obvious combination.  I am surprised
> it hasn't been done yet and will be shocked it if isn't implemented
> by somebody within another month or two.

It should certainly be doable to write a Grok plugin. :)

> One issue is that Cheetah
> has the non-XML ugliness of DTML without really big advantages in
> terms of functionality (even though it looks clean), and it would
> further fragment the community and set of options.  Splitting a
> community is a really dangerous idea.

Agreed that we shouldn't fragment the community further. It's indeed
dangerous. Let's focus
a bit more about pulling it back together again.

Regards,

Martijn