[Zope3-Users] Re: [Zope-dev] Zope 3.4.0 candidate 1 Released

[Martin Aspeli]

Hermann Himmelbauer wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, 27. März 2008 18:26 schrieb Kurt Zitze:
>> if you want to raise the userbase of zope, the first and most obvious thing
>> to do is, get a forum running! mailing lists are bu******* and completly
>> out of date. it is max cumbersome to login into your email account to do a
>> post and so on, i think i dont need to enumerate all the disadvantages of a
>> mailing list compared to a forum. i am even not aware of how to replay to a
> 
> Well, all I can say to this is: Please do not split up the userbase by opening 
> some extra web forum. I personally dislike forums, they are often cumbersome 
> to use, therefore I prefer mailing lists a lot.

I think the chances of this happening are virtually zero. :)

> Although I don't like forums that much, it is true that newbies and specific 
> users tend to use them. To satisfy both sides, I can think of a forum that 
> has a gateway to this mailing list. If I remember it right, Plone has such a 
> thing (perhaps it could be used somehow?). This forum would then also serve 
> as a pretty looking archive, which is also a good thing.

So does Zope. See nabble.com and news.gmane.org.

>> and if you finaly have one, put it on the start site, not like this mailing
>> list that is so to say hidden!
> 
> It's true, that Zope3 and Zope3 support ist somehow hidden in the Zope 
> website. But AFAIK a new Zope website is currently under development, which 
> will probably solve all these issues.

Indeed. We should see some movement on this over the weekend.

>> everything in zope is not obvious, at least not to me. everything has to be
>> found out in hours of studying the sources! reading the books, using google
>> to find sources that arent linked nowhere. i stumbled over nabble, i
>> stumbled over nearly everythink i essentialy have to know!
> 
> Well, the learning curve is really steep, that's true. I personally also did 
> have to study the sources quite often. Phillips book did help, but often only 
> after a personal advice from himself or after studying the sources.
> 
> The real problem for me was that Zope 3 is all about a new software 
> development concept, namely, the component design with interfaces / 
> adapters / utilities etc. This is something that the Joe Average programmer 
> is not used to, so he does not really know how to map his ideas to a 
> componentized architecture. I don't know how to deal with this problem, 
> perhaps a theoretical book about componentized software design could help; On 
> the other hand newbies like to start right away and don't want to study a 
> complicated design book beforehand.

I think this is the problem that Grok attempts to address.

> Another issue is the ZMI. Most people, who begin Zope3, start out with 
> Phillips book or similar documentation which uses and adapts the ZMI. 
> However, many people sooner or later come to the conclusion that the ZMI can 
> not be configured to their needs, things get very complicated and people are 
> frustrated. Many people, such like me, then have a look at a ZMI-less design 
> (e.g. z3.pagelet, z3c.form etc.), which works better for many projects.
> 
> Anyway, after approx. 1 year of Zope 3 development, I can say that going 
> through these hassles and problems was definitely worth it. Moreover, I 
> think, Zope 3 is very much "work in progress" and I'm expecting many things 
> to come that will solve the issues above and make the entry step easier.

Zope 3 is also one of the most advanced and powerful development 
frameworks in existence - in any language. I miss the Component 
Architecture so much when I do Java. ;)

Martin

-- 
Author of `Professional Plone Development`, a book for developers who
want to work with Plone. See http://martinaspeli.net/plone-book