[Zope-PTK] Refactoring warning...

[Paul Everitt]

I've been waiting a while, hoping to actually produce the document
mentioned, but I'll go ahead and reply since I haven't made much
progress.

The PTK needs a well-written vision, a la a feature sheet or a white
paper.  (Zope needs this to.)  Much of the material can come from the
original DocBkXML thingy I wrote, I just need to sit down and do it.

The PTK also needs a new name.  I've spent a lot of time over the last
two weeks thinking about it.  If someone comes up with a name, lemme
know.

Our vision at Digital Creations is to create something that smells like
the following:

1) A _product_.  Zope is a platform that isn't necessarily
out-of-the-box useful.  The thing that we're interested in needs to be
on the order of Squishdot -- immediately grok-able and useful.

2) Consulting-ware.  I'll go ahead and contradict one immediately as
evidence of the tension.  We want PTKNG to be flexible for consulting
projects.

3) Targeted at the CMS market.  The next phase of Digital Creations is
to focus on the content management systems market, where products like
Vignette, Broadvision, Interwoven, and Spectra reside.  These are all
generally balances between (1) and (2), combined with very high end
professional services.

Increasingly, Spectra is our yardstick for the PTKNG product.  The same
company produces the app server platform (Cold Fusion Enterprise Server)
and the CMS (Spectra).  Spectra is a friendly environment to use and
customizeable in well-understood (though baroque) way.  Finally, Spectra
can do useful stuff on day one.

From a business perspective, though, Allaire isn't organized like, say,
Vignette, so they aren't the model on the business side.

The restructuring that Tres and Shane have proposed and now done tries
to fulfill these goals.  There's still a fairly frameworkish piece
(PTKBase) that has all the core services.  However, there's a highly
packaged "product" in the DemoPortal that lays the basis for a sound
product.

With announcements we'll be making over the next, say, four weeks,
you'll see a lot more about our plans.

--Paul

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Chris Withers [mailto:chrisw@nipltd.com]
> Sent: Monday, July 31, 2000 2:31 PM
> To: Bill Anderson
> Cc: zope-ptk@zope.org
> Subject: Re: [Zope-PTK] Refactoring warning...
> 
> 
> Bill Anderson wrote:
> > Well, Kevin is pulling the Membership stuff off his 
> section, so ... ;)
> 
> My point was that there's no link to Membership from the PTK product
> page or Wiki AFAIK.
> 
> > As far as the overall 'current status' of the PTK, wasn't 
> there a PTK Weekly News thingum
> > like the ZWN? What happened to it? ...Seems it is in the 
> PTKWiki, but couldn't it be
> > mailed to the list? Would anyone object to that?
> 
> There is now a PTK section ZWN, which I think covers this, but neither
> and that or the mailing list provide the kind of permenant record you
> need for people to reference for things why where to get teh latest
> downloads...
> 
> > AFAIAC, given the current 'alpha' status of the PTK, IMO, 
> you should be on this list if
> > you are using it. Of course, the PTK pages should reflect 
> the current moving target/alpha
> > status of PTK right up front.
> 
> Fair comments :-)
> 
> > We do need a summary of the current status, as there are a 
> number of different goings-on.
> 
> Here here :-)
> 
> > Of course, I think a problem we have suffered is the 
> blurring/confusing of the difference
> > between a portal, and a community site The PTK as currently 
> done, is not a portal site,
> > but rather a community site. 
> 
> Also a fair point...
> 
> > Portals are gateways to other places, and communities are
> > places where you have 'members' that can contribute and 
> participate. Of course, one of the
> > latest buzzwords is 'vortal', a vertical portal. A vertical 
> portal is like a cross between
> > a portal for a specific topic (say, Role Playing Games), 
> and the community of people
> > intereste din that topic. (Yes, you could say I've had too 
> much training in this field ;).
> 
> Erk :S 
> 
> > For example, www.yahoo.com is a portal. clubs.yahoo.com is 
> an attempt to get into the
> > community side of things. technocrat.net is a vortal. It 
> serves as a portal for technology
> > information, and as a community of persons interested in 
> the field able to discuss related
> > topics. IME, this confusion has slightly hurt the image of 
> the PTK in at least one
> > corporate environment (where they have the money to send 
> people like me to training on
> > things like this).
> 
> Mayeb it should be called the CPTK because you can actually 
> build either
> communities or portals with it to the same extent right now :-)
> 
> > Perhaps something that needs done is to clarify the intent 
> and purpose of the PTK.
> 
> Give it a crack :-) How about in dev.zope.org?
> 
> cheers,
> 
> Chris
> 
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