Zope question: collaborative environments?

[Samuel A. Falvo II]

On Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:27:34 -0400, Jason Cunliffe wrote:
>IF you had a good spec for your project,
>AND IF you had a year's Zope background expereience,
>AND IF it was now Haloween 2001, THEN Zope might be the perfect tool... but
>then again it might not.

I think this is an unnecessarily harsh assessment of Zope.  While I fully
agree that Zope's feature set isn't as extensive as some alternatives,
understand that half the problem with Zope is that the real functionality of
Zope comes from its *products*, not from Zope itself.  Zope provides the
basic engine by which products are able to offer their services, though it
hinders its ability to be easily learned.

I've never had any problems installing products.  Just drop the products
into the Zope environment, restart the server(s), and off you go. Feel free
to use them as you wish.  Any problems that I've had have always been bugs
with the *products*, not with Zope proper.

The problem, therefore, is that the assorted set of products available for
Zope are all in varying stages of development, and none of the *products*
are ready for prime-time.  Zope, the core itself, has always been ready for
prime-time -- at least since the 2.1 series was first unveiled.

>framework with acquistion], have a great spec under in your left hand and
>the OReily Zope book in the other, then maybe 3 months to show off first
>really solid site demo...

Well, no -- not quite this severe.  You're exaggerating here.  However, Zope
is not designed for the web content newbie either.  It takes time -- it took
me about two months to learn Zope and its philosophies, and how to exploit
them in varying circumstances.  I still have some difficulties even after a
year and a half of using it extensively in some cases.

Like martial arts, painting, or fixing a car, there's only so much you can
learn from reading a book or watching other people.  At some point, you need
to just dive in and try it yourself.  The single best way to learn how to
use Zope is to just download it, install it, follow their simple tutorial,
modify the set of pages supplied, and learn as you go.  Forget the web spec
for now.  Forget the books (though they're nice to have around if you need
them).  Forget the fancy terms (the technique that Zope calls "Acquisition"
has actually been used in a variety of places previously in the history of
computer industry).

>I suggest you look seriously at these alternatives:

Exactly -- don't use Zope for the sake of it being based on Python.  Use
Zope because it fulfills your needs.  There's room for all sorts of tools in
this world.  Sometimes, it seems like this world is a little *too*
competitive.

-- 
KC5TJA/6, DM13, QRP-L #1447 | Official Channel Saint, *Team Amiga*
Samuel A. Falvo II	    |
Oceanside, CA		    |