[Zope] Zope 3 and Rails - a pragmatic and agile comparation (put the hype aside)

[Tim Nash]

Here is a follow up I wrote that fell off the list. The original
poster probably thought he was posting to the zope at zope.org but I
leave his id off just in case he didn't. I am reposting it here mainly
because he makes several good points.
-Tim


>  I find zope's through the web editing it's worst aspect. It would make a
>  great optional add-on, but to make the root of the site only editable
>  through the web is just a disaster.

I could vote for an optional add-on. BTW I meant to say google
gadgets. The point is that there is always far more innovation outside
your company than inside and companies are looking for software that
helps them tap into that talent.

>  > 2. object database. Perfect for web services with changing schemas.
>
>  It's great, but I wish it wasn't mapped directly to URLs. There should
>  be an abstraction, like the controller in MVC systems.

I could also vote for this but apache does a lot of this for you.

>  DTML is horrible because it looks like XML but isn't. It should either
>  be XML, like TAL, which I think is great, or be nothing like it, like
>  django's templating language.

If you are talking about reading dtml  I share your pain, but if you
are talking about writing it then you have a built in filter. When
your page starts to look ugly rethink your problem. For example, these
days you can program tabs with secondary menus using just two dtml-in
loops if you start with tabs that only require css
http://labs.silverorange.com/images/tabsupdate/about.html


>  > 5. a ZMI which allows zope to be an easy to administer database. Easy
>  > enough for distribution to powerusers.
>
>  Useful, but should be turn-off-able.

I can vote for this as well

>
>  I want to be able to have a zope site entirely in the file system with
>  no ZODB, so I can keep it in subversion, and use normal things like
>  grep, patch and sed to apply changes to the whole codebase.

You can do this with zope 2 but you can also allow user customization
that you can later migrate in to the filesystem code.

If I want it in the site to do a CMS type
>  application, I want to put it inside my File System Site code, not put a
>  file system site object into it.

Not sure what you mean here. You aren't forced to put filesystem
objects into the ZODB. The folders/tree structure of zope is a natural
navigational device that is very useful. Check out the book "Don't
make me think".

Zope 3 has great ideas (components, interfaces, views, maybe PAU) but
zope 2 (dtml, TTW, Plone) is what pulls them in the door. And you have
to get them in the door before they will buy.