Zope Documentation (was RE: Python Popularity: Questions and Comments)

[A. Keyton Weissinger]

I have had similar experiences trying to get my head around Zope. I write
J2EE applications with a group of folks. I was expecting a Pet Shop or at
least an EJB-like spec of the lay of the land.

If someone asked me -- someone who considers himself a huge Pythonista --
what Zope was all about, I'd have to say I didn't have a real clue.

Now, it just so happens that I also write on the side for O'Reilly and
others. If any of you guys at DC want to email me back, I would be happy to
help spread the gospel according to Zope/Python. But it needs to have
serious facts (comparisons between similar setups for J2EE/M$), more serious
specifications (an EJB-like container approach based in Python, for example,
would be huge -- difficult certainly, but huge), and even more serious
examples. I agree with Bill. I want to see the full thing broken into
pieces.

Keyton

> -----Original Message-----
> From: python-list-admin at python.org
> [mailto:python-list-admin at python.org]On Behalf Of Bill Tate
> Sent: Friday, December 28, 2001 9:31 AM
> To: python-list at python.org
> Subject: Re: Python Popularity: Questions and Comments
>
>
> Ron Stephens <rdsteph at earthlink.net> wrote in message
> news:<3C2B9E04.9957801F at earthlink.net>...
> > I recently read an interview with a Digital Creations top
> manager where he said
> > that he hopes someone starts a successful business based solely
> on providing
> > ISP services using Zope, with full technical support. Is anyone
> looking into
> > this? Does anyone think this could be a successful business model? I am
> > interested in opinions on this.
>
> This past spring, I spent a full month pouring over Zope in detail.  I
> pulled every example product I could find that I thought would be
> relative to the purpose of setting up a commercial-based application.
> I downloaded the tutorial and the draft zope book.  I pulled down
> every bit of documentation I could find for developers.  In so many
> cases, I found whatever documentation was available that key aspects
> of the implementation took the "assumed facts-already-in-evidence"
> approach; omitting key details that would were critical to improving
> my understanding of using Zope.  I consider myself a masochist in the
> sense that I'm willing to go through various contortions to figure
> something out, but like many others, I reached a point of saying that
> I still don't get it.  I won't even touch the issue of ZOPE's CMF or
> Zope Templates - the documentation on that couldn't be more confusing
> if it tried.
>
> My point is, the product may be perfect for my needs, but please do
> away with tutorial examples referring to using zoo animals to
> illustrate object navigation or elvis sightings to solidfy
> understanding of the product.  There were simply too many disjointed
> pieces in the documentation to allow me to pull all the pieces
> together and believe me when I say I'm a person who will go to great
> lengths to try to "get something."  If I'm having trouble, than I
> suspect more than a few others are as well.
>
> Any commercial enterprise is likely to be supported by either some
> data model or object-class model that almost invariably has a RDBMS on
> the back-end for persistent storage (I've also worked with ODBMS so
> ZODB isn't an issue for me).  If you want to gain converts to zope,
> build a tutorial that follows some resemblance of a what a normal web
> site has to provide by way of example - perhaps something akin to the
> Pet Store example in Zope would be useful???  How about building an
> example auction site from scratch?  I would be more than happy to
> devote time and energy contributing to Zope but I can't until I figure
> out how Zope works.  To some degree, I think my confusion with Zope
> increased AFTER I went through the documentation.  Truthfully, I don't
> even know whether Zope would be even a reasonable candidate for doing
> something akin to the Pet Store example or even an auction site for
> that matter.
>
> PHP has virtually exploded on the scene by providing a everything
> including the kitchen sink - it appears to have taken little
> convincing to gain converts to PHP and accordingly to the latest web
> surveys, its implementation is huge.  I much rather see tools like
> Zope achieve that kind of status. But I don't imagine that too many
> folks are going to be willing to work that hard to achieve Zope Zen
> when other alternatives exists and that's a damn shame because I
> suspect Zope is an excellent product.
>
> I truly do commend and appreciate DC's contribution's to Python, but I
> hope somebody can point to something (either examples or
> documentation) that gives me a reason to try again.
>
> Truthfully, I just don't think its me.
>
> Bill Tate
> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>
>