[Zope3-dev] Re: Rid the term 'product'

[Casey Duncan]

On Fri, 19 Mar 2004 14:50:44 +0100
Philipp von Weitershausen <philipp at weitershausen.de> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have a small proposal which is too untechnicnal to deserve a wiki
> page:

I'm not sure technical-ness determines that, but whatever.
 
> Zope 3 is much more pythonic when it comes to extensions. They needn't
> 
> be in special places anymore and fulfill weird packaging rules. We all
> 
> know that that is a Good Thing. So, when we have used the term
> 'product' up till now in Zope 3 development, we were basically
> applying the term we have used in Zope 2 to something that wasn't even
> a product in a Zope 2 kind of sense.

I've been teaching Zope for some time and I've always found the term
"Product" unclear if not confusing to explain. At the least it's quite
unintuitive.

I do think it is valuable to have terminology for artifacts that compose
things built for and with Zope 3. Here are some random thoughts:

A Zope "application" is a standalone system built using Zope. This
system has a default configuration which allows it to be used without
further scripting, development or configuration then what is provided in
the app's distribution.

A Zope "component" is a molecule of a Zope application. A Lego brick. In
the end these are combined in various ways to create applications.

A Zope "library" is a collection of components distributed together. It
probably isn't useful on it's own, but it might include an example
application or two. We could also call these "bundles" I suppose, but
I'm unsure why a new word needs to be used. To me "library" fits. A
"library" is a bit more than a Python "package" (since it contains some
Zope-isms like interfaces, zcml, page templates or other zope
dependancies) and would follow the Zope conventions for layout and
naming.

The Zope "framework" is Zope itself. It is both a (meta) library and (at
least one) application all together. The application provided is fairly
low-level and designed more as an advanced management utility then
something Joe Internet would use.

I think we should resist inventing/repurposing words pretty hard unless
there is no precident for what we are doing.

-Casey