[Zope3-Users] thoughts about z3c.form-package

[Hermann Himmelbauer]

Am Mittwoch 08 Oktober 2008 17:14:35 schrieb Tim Cook:
> (Thanks Roger and Adam for your earlier replies.)
>
> On Wed, 2008-10-08 at 16:59 +0200, Hermann Himmelbauer wrote:
> > Moreover, z3c.form is complex, but it isn't hard if one knows what to
> > do/how to do - which leads me back to my WIKI idea...
>
> Hermann,
>
> This is a very good point.  For those of us just trying to get a handle
> on how to use z3c.form, in the best and most efficient way, a Wiki is a
> great way to collect patterns.
>
> I think (feel?) that z3c.form is a very powerful package and the
> documentation isn't bad either.  Some of us learn better by seeing
> actual use cases though in order to adapt them to our own needs.

Yes, that's true. However, the documentation does not cover, hmmm, I'd 
say, "the very basic concepts", which helps the user understand why z3c.form 
was designed in this specific way.

For instance, Roger "enlightened" me yestereday that z3c.form could also be 
used for creating PDF documents - I never thought about that, but he is of 
course right.

So, I have the impression that a lot of experience combined with a good 
knowledge of advanced patterns (e.g. adapters) led to the design concepts of 
z3c.form, while the documentation (e.g. in form.txt) covers only quite basic 
things, which may lead people to the misconception that z3c.form has a 
limited usage.

Therefore, a better documentation approach would be to first present quite 
some theory about web-frameworks, HTML-Forms etc., which leads to a bigger 
picture and thus to a higher acceptance of the complexity in z3c.form. If 
this is then combined with a WIKI-Style "pattern-receipe" section, most 
understandability issues may be solved.

To me, this problem can be applied for many parts of Zope3: Geniality is due 
to limited knowledge interpreted as useless complexity. And the answer to 
this issue should, to my mind, not be to hide complexity, but to explain the 
big picture, which lets people understand the geniality.

Best Regards,
Hermann

-- 
hermann at qwer.tk
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