[Zope] The agony of the ZOPE Documentation

Chris Withers chrisw@nipltd.com
Wed, 24 May 2000 20:23:31 +0100


jiva@devware.com wrote:
> I'm sorry, but I have to say, the ZOPE documentation, despite efforts
> to improve it, is absolutely, positively horrible.  Not because the
> content isn't there, but because the tools to access it simply suck.

Gotta agree with this :(

> Additionally, the zdp web site is a real nice idea that is SO poorly
> executed IMO as to make it totally unusable.  

ZDP is currently undergoing a lot of development and unfortunately I
have to agree that it isn't there yet...

Unfortunately, no-one is getting paid to do it, and everyone who is
working on it would probably get fired if they spent enough time on it
to REALLY get the job done...

I reckon there's about 25 man weeks of work to do based on 5 people
spending:
-1 week to build the tools
-1 week to plan the structure of the documentation
-3 weeks to get ALL the Zope documentation linked in one place (which is
what zdp is supposed to be...)

So, has anyone got the cash? ;-)

Once this is done, it will be less work to keep that documentation up to
date. Hopefully, eventually, all documentation would end up on
zdp.zope.org and not just be linked from it...

> You can't even browse
> the documentation without clicking through a thousand different
> links.  

I agree here too :(

(I can give you specific examples of how to improve the site
> if you want.)

Send them to zdp@zope.org, in fact, better still, JOIN zdp@zope.org and
go and make the changes yourself :-)

Good luck, I think you're (or should that be 'we're all') going to need
it...

Chris