[Zope3-dev] Zope 3 needs a new documentation strategy

[Luciano Ramalho]

One of the first questions anyone needs answered when studying a new
framework is "Where is the canonical reference for the API?".

Try googling for "zope 3 api documentation"... [1]

Everyone coming to a new framework expects the API documentation
for it to be highly visible in it's main web site, or at least available
somewhere on the Web...

OK, I understand Zope 3 is undergoing a radical reorganization right
now, which is a further push to decentralization, making the idea of
locally generated API documentation even more attractive.

But we also need the API published on Zope.org, for a few
advantages that the apidoc tool will never be able to give us:

- we need to be able to use Google to search the API documentation
(even if the apidoc search worked perfectly, which it doesn't)

- we need to be able to collaborate with comments and examples to the docs;

The second point is really crucial. Just take a look at this page, *please*:

http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.classobj.php

Last year I had to do a project in PHP, and again and again the
answers I was looking for were in the contributed comments and
examples, even though their documentation is very compreehensive. The
same amazing user participation can be seen in all 23 languages (!) in
which the PHP API is documented.

And finally, we should also publish the invaluable README.txt files
scattered in the Zope 3 package tree, as they are not visible through
apidoc at all, and initially I just thought they contained installation
instructions so I ignored them.

Zope 3 documentation must be made more visible, and contributing to
to it should be *much* easier than being a Zope 3 committer.

Cheers,

Luciano


[1] Googling for the docs: what I found

Earlier today I googled for "zope 3 api documentation".
The first link is Stephan Richter's mail of Jan/2004 announcing
API doc. In it, there is the link:

http://localhost:8080/++apidoc++

However, that URL is not active by default.

The second link returned by Google is this:

http://wiki.zope.org/zope3/Documentation

Here we find vague references to a certain API Doc Tool, but no
explanation of how to enable it and access it (OK, that is a Wiki, so
it's easy to fix; I just started the APIDocTool page).

The remaining links returned by Google are even less helpful, and on
page 2 we get a link to Shane Hathaway's post titled "Zope 3
Frustration"...