[Zope3-dev] Where's the API?

[Chris Gray]

On Fri, 8 Aug 2003, Stephan Richter wrote:
>
> There has not been much work on the TTW development experience. We have mainly
> concentrated on providing a solid foundation for Python developers, making
> the development of new Python extensions as pleasant as possible. And I think
> in this area we have succeeded in many ways.
>
> I think once the first beta is out, we will take much more care about the Web
> development end. But we still have not made many decisions in this area. We
> still need to discover how we want to address the various audiences, suhc as
> the component developer, site/content manager and the end user. Therefore we
> have not put much effort into exposing the API.

Thanks very much for your answer, Stephan; it is exactly what I was
looking for.  I did realize that so far the emphasis has been on Python
programmers and developers.  It was just that I checked z3 out of CVS,
installed it, and ran it with little difficulty and found myself facing
something recognizably like the Zope2 ZMI, but at that point was quickly
brought to a halt.  (Actually, I've made some progress since then.)

If things are going to stay this way until the beta is out, I would urge
you to emphasize that the beta is aimed at Python developers and not TTW
developers, to avoid people getting soured by an experience like mine.
Also, I'd urge the Zope community to learn from its past and not let
documentation lag too far behind development.

> However, we have implemented all the necessary hooks to make it easy to write
> access to the API. In ZPT this is done using namespaces like:
>
> <span tal:content="context/dc:title" />
> or
> <span tal:content="context/zapi:title_or_id" /> (or something like that)

I have done some, successful, experimenting with twiddling the API.  Can
you point me to any documentation or discussion relevant to the hooks that
have been implemented?

> What does all of this mean? Zope 3 is just not ready for the TTW developer at
> this point. However, you should feel free to start a Wiki collecting
> requirements for this target audience. Such a document would make our lives
> much simpler, once we start to look more carefully at TTW development.

I think I will start a new email thread to address your last paragraph.

Thanks again,
Chris