[Zope3-dev] IMPORTANT RFS: Through the Web Site Development

[Jon Whitener]

I'd like to second what Stephan Richter wrote.  I'm a relative newbie, and one of the "Group 2" Zope users Stephan described:

>2.) They use ZClasses (because they understand sort of OO programming) and use 
>scripts often DTML and ZPT, but maybe already some very small Python scripts 
>to do the logic.

As Stephan says, the core Zope group of insiders and developers seem better served than the many mere users.  For my part, I'm a one-person Web department whose Web site goals are mostly text and images with some dynamic content - like most sites in the world, I'd wager.

The use (let alone creation) of products / packages is minimal for me: a MailHost here, an ExternalEditor there, and I'm happy.  The obvious emphasis on package management for Zope 3 doesn't mean a whole lot to me.  I was a disconcerted by the brevity of Jim's discussion of creating pages, in his own words "[p]robably the most common development activity".

In Zope, I feel I (and most people) could nicely accomplish Web site goals with ZPTs, some simple Script (Python)s, and ZClasses.  However, I've just recently come to experience and understand the fabled fragility / unpredictability of ZClasses.  *This is the only reason I am now trying to learn how to create a Python product.*

I'd be much more excited about a Zope 3 that maintained the ease of creation of ZClasses, while providing more robustness and under-the-hood accessibilty.  The package management is a whole new tier of Zope package functionality that I don't understand, and doubt I will much need.

 From a newbie, FWIW.

Jon Whitener
Detroit Michigan USA

At 1/13/03 08:58 AM -0500, Stephan Richter wrote:
>What I noticed is that we will have an awesome system for people that know 
>Python and understand the CA.
>
>On the other hand we will loose about 70-80% (wild guess) of the current Zope 
>2 TTW developers, who do not know any Python and have difficulties to 
>understand it. I am pretty sure that there are many, many sites out there 
>that are written using one of the following two options:
>
>1.) They only use the standard Content Objects that are provided by default in 
>Zope 2 (maybe they download another product or two). Then they use ZPT and 
>DTML to do all the logic. Note: I do not think that much Python Script is 
>used unless someone on the mailing list gave it to them.
>
>2.) They use ZClasses (because they understand sort of OO programming) and use 
>scripts often DTML and ZPT, but maybe already some very small Python scripts 
>to do the logic.
>
>Advanced Zope developers use:
>
>3) They write their own Python products, but develop most of the look and feel 
>using the ZMI and therefore ZPT and DTML that lives in the ZODB.
>
>While I think that group 3 is addressed nicely, Group 1 and 2 are not. The 
>current versions of ZPT Page and DTML Page are too weak (as intended when 
>originally implmented) to satisfy group 1, since you do not have access to 
>some of the interesting methods.
>
>Example: I want to create a menu quickly. What I did on one site was to simply 
>take an OrderedFolder and put other OrderedFolder objects in it having a 
>senible title. Then I just called "of.objectValues('Ordered Folder')" and 
>displayed the titles of the sub-folders an voila I had my menu. This was a 
>2-minute task. How would I do that in Zope 3?
>
>Addressing Group 2, let's say I want to quickly create a NewsItem object that 
>has a couple of properties and methods. In Zope 2 I would just create a 
>ZClass, add all the properties and create a couple of scripts for the methods 
>and I am done. If ZClasses weren't so unpredictable, this should be a 
>10-minute task. How would I do that in Zope 3? Note that writing a Python 
>module is **not** an option.
<SNIP>