[Grok-dev] Re: Working towards a 0.9 release

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

On 26 Feb 2007, at 12:16 , Kevin Teague wrote:
> I'd really like to see a grok.zope.org - a nice short URL with even  
> a single page of introduction text and links to assorted Grok bits  
> around the web would go a long ways towards creating more interest  
> in the project I think. To that effect, I'm willing to volunteer to  
> help with this - I've started work on a single static page here:
>
> http://www.bud.ca/files/grokonepage/

Great! I like the simple and clear design. It also mentions almost  
everything you need to know about grok for now on one page. Perhaps  
we should add a second page with the tutorial later. We certainly  
need to mention somewhere how to install grok...!

Some feedback:

* Thanks for linking to my two videos. In the longterm, I don't think  
we should be linking to neither one of them. In retrospect I don't  
think the presentation at the Snow sprint went so well, and it's a  
lot focused on the Zope community. Grok certainly also wants to  
attract pure Python programmers. But perhaps that's just me and you  
guys think the video is ok... Also, I need to redo the screencast  
because it's not up to date anymore and could be improved. But for  
now, those links good.

* The example code could use a bit of updating. I suggest something  
like::

   import grok

   class HelloWorld(grok.Application, grok.Model):
       pass

   class Index(grok.View):

       def render(self):
           return 'ME GROK HELLO WORLD!'

* You have a typo in the line mentioning Grok Wiki: gor -> for

* I think the only thing grok smashes are ZCML and mammoths :). I  
suggest a heading like "ME GROK HYPERLINKS"

* It'd be nice to provide a hyperlink to the #grok channel directly.

> I really like the cave man theme, it would be cool to add things  
> like a navigation bar that looks like it is chiseled out of stone  
> and cave drawings sketches down the sides.

Yeah, I was thinking the same, but I'm way too little gifted as a  
designer.

> A couple considerations:
>
>  * Grok logo? A chiseled in stone logo might be neat - it might be  
> quite hard to get right though. I've used a typeface called Artiste  
> for sample page, It's kind of growing on me.
>
>  * Grok slogan/tagline? I thought about putting the tagline  
> "Prehistoric web development", although that doesn't really say  
> anything, perhaps something like "Zope 3 web development simplified"?

We used to say "Now even cavemen can use Zope 3". I think that  
neither critices Zope 3 too much, nor does it make grok sound like  
some archaic thing. The idea is that people will think "heck, if  
cavemen can use this thing, I should certainly be able to as well".

> Moving beyond the single page, what do people think about using a  
> Plone site for the Grok content? I could set-up a Plone with a  
> custom from-scratch Grok skin, and then we could have a standard  
> Plone skin for doing the content editing. This would make it a lot  
> easier for community participation in the documentation and content  
> side, and we wouldn't require svn accounts and a static build  
> process to update the content. In addition, we could then encourage  
> discussion about the content on the Plone-skin side, but leave  
> those documents in public draft, and not display them from the Grok- 
> skin side.

Thanks for volunteering to set up such a site. I think this will be a  
lot of work. It clearly shouldn't be our top-priority. For 0.9 a  
simple static page should definitely suffice, for 1.0 we can then  
think about making something fancier.

I certainly wouldn't mind using Plone (perhaps it's a bit overkill?).  
What we'll need is for the developers to update content, to upload  
releases, perhaps write news items. And a wiki would be nice.

Philipp