[Zope] Re: Content Management Design Patterns

[jerry]

Hi Graham,

On Sat, 16 Feb 2002, you wrote:
> Perhaps it would be useful to indicate on the companion
> website webdev.zopeonarope.com what no longer works under
> 2.5

Even better, we hope to be posting updates, fixes, or workarounds 
for anything that stops working with newer versions of Zope, or for 
whatever reason. In fact, this process has already begun. See the 
chapter two folder on the web site, for example. 

> and which parts that have been emphasized in the book
> are no longer relevant.

Relevance is a pretty subjective quality, and has everything to do 
with the tools that an individual selects. If a tool still works and is 
performing some useful task for someone, that seems quite relevant, 
especiallly to that person.

> I've been trying to follow Chapter 12, but find that emarket
> is a broken product, and apparently from what you say above,
> zpatterns is to be superceded soon.

Thanks to your feedback, Steve will be looking at emarket right away. 
More details of the  problems you've encountered would greatly aid 
that effort.

ZPatterns has been called "obsolete", "a retired package", and 
probably things even less inspiring. On the other hand, the term 
I find most useful to describe a package that has reached such a 
stage in its life cycle is "stable". Just because ZPatterns isn't 
the hottest agenda item of the originators anymore, doesn't mean 
that it has ceased to provide benefit to those who have climbed 
the learning curve and implemented production systems. 

Lots of folks are still running Linux 2.2, even though there are 
some nice features available in the 2.4 kernel. However, there 
are also some showstoppers hiding in 2.4, for certain users, 
and 2.4 is still pretty darn good for most purposes.

I sincerely hope that the Zope 3 components model catches on, 
and makes life easier for many Zope developers, but experience 
leads me to suspect that things will continue to evolve for the 
foreseeable future. There is probably no way around this continual 
churn, and after all the ultimate goal is an ever improving Zope. 

Still, it can be frustrating for the garden variety Zope fan  who really 
just needs to get things working, and to be able to count on them 
to remain in that state. If Zope 3 is the ticket, super. If ZPatterns 
gets you there, who can ask for more than that? 

Sometimes the latest thing != the greatest thing, in terms of net 
productivity.

> --
> Graham Chiu

Thanks for your interest,
Jerry S.