Zope question: collaborative environments?

[Jason Cunliffe]

I agree with other posters about the unrealistic schedule.

Zope is *very* interesting and well worth studying, but definitely not ready
for prime time yet.


It has tons of potentital, a very steep learning curve, a dismal lack of
lucid integrated documentation [lots of advice and online help but result is
it is still all over the place], and a small ardent pool of developer, the
best of whom seem to work for Digital Creations [the owner/authors of Zope].
In other words all the people who really know Zope well are BUSY developing
the next super integrated version and/or trying to get the one and only,
long awaited Zope book ready for printing [O'Reilly Associates].

There are many cool Zope 'Products' = plugins. But getting these to work
together in a magica and smooth manner requires
a: good knowledge and documentation of Zope
b: good knowledge of Python
c: lots of time for testing and posting to zope at zope.org mailing list to
solve tiny crucial timeconsuming syntax headaches.

Unfortunately Digital Creations do not have any visual/user/interface design
sense. It is simply off their map of things they consider important. Thus no
nice looking Zope sites anywhere. Very cool under the hood, but they all
look like !@#$!

The crew at DC have their combined brilliant heads down in the cortex of
Zope code. What Zope also really needs is a higher level workflow awareness
and architecture suitable for design templates. Since they are not selling
Zope as a product yet, and since their income comes from VC money adn
consulting services, they do not yet have the time or motivation to develop
such. Also they geeks not inteface or graphic designers..So they argue all
this comes later.

This is a thorny problem because Zope is destined for dynamic web page
creation, so how as a designer and interface architect does one design for
it and make style changes?? Macromemedia Ultra Dreamweaver has been
adressing this need for some tools ... ASP, ColdFusion etc.The problem
spills over to

IF you had a good spec for your project,
AND IF you had a year's Zope background expereience,
AND IF it was now Haloween 2001, THEN Zope might be the perfect tool... but
then again it might not.

If you are really good perhaps  months.
If you are a wiz at python, have lots of similar module integration
experience, think like this already[object orietned dynamic web server
framework with acquistion], have a great spec under in your left hand and
the OReily Zope book in the other, then maybe 3 months to show off first
really solid site demo...

I suggest you look seriously at these alternatives:


http://www.paul.boddie.net/Python/web_modules.html

AOLServer + Python using PyWX
http://pywx.idyll.org/

M$oft + ASP

Apache + PHP
http://www.devshed.com/Server_Side/PHP/


Manila
http://manila.userland.com/

Roxen
http://www.roxen.com/

Groove [very very cool]
http://www.groove.net/

good luck and do please keep me posted how you resolve the project
Jason