newbie: Zope

[Nick Trout]

> Note that questions about Zope belong better on the Zope mailing
> list.

Point taken, I will try and join. Wish there was a news group, much better!
Had trouble getting on the site earlier but now looks okay.

> What about the Zope Guides?
> http://www.zope.org/Documentation
> And of course there's the Zope Documentation Project's site:
> http://zdp.zope.org/

I find them a little too low level and sparse. Yes they introduce you to the
concepts but when you want to actually do something the best I have found is
a Quick Reference. There is hardly anything on the Document Project site! I
like lots of examples. Even the How-Tos are a bit sparse and a little
obscure for beginners.

> I'm not quite sure if that information is available somewhere, or
> whether it's mostly folklore. Lots of ZClasses don't have a base class
> though. Often also they inherit from Folder or ObjectManager, to get
> folderish behavior.

Why, what, how?! What behaviour would this give etc...?

> > DTML is horrible.
> Ah, so you found out, huh? :) DTML is horrible compared to Python.
> There are some guidelines to keep it simple. And move to Python
> as soon as you feel your DTML becomes too horrible.

There's not much info on interfacing with Python. And then the interface is
DTML-ish?!

> > How does persistence work for Python objects?
> Basically, automatically (if you inherit from the right base classes in
> Zope), as long as you treat all members of your objects as immutable.
> That means that if you have an object a with a list l as an attribute:

Which class?!

> a.l = [1, 2, 3]
>
> And you change l by mutating it:
>
> a.l.append(4)
>
> The Zope object database won't detect it. You can signal it, but easier
still
> is just doing something like this:
>
> l = a.l
> l.append(4)
> a.l = l

Bit messy, but I see the point. How do you flag it, out of interest?

> A very good introduction to the ZODB is here:
> http://starship.python.net/crew/amk/python/writing/zodb-zeo.html

Thanks, thats a good link.

> Good luck!
> Regards,
> Martijn

Thanks for the advice,
Nick