[Zope] Zope reference documentation?

[Patrick Price]

Is there a book or a place where I can find:

a: a DTML programmer's reference, or an API reference, or a TAL 
reference which contains ALL the objects and methods available to any of 
these scripting languages?  The Zope Book doesn't have such a reference. 
 What it has is very limited and not for a beginner.

For instance, let's say I want to learn about something really basic, 
like what REQUEST.get does.   I've searched the Zope 2nd edition book 
(searched the most likely 4 chapters where I thought I could find this 
information) and found nothing.  I've searched Google on how to use 
"REQUEST.get" - nothing again that looks like a reference.  I could 
probably find it mentioned in the cookbook in a snippet, but where's the 
book that has this BASIC stuff in it, indexed, with examples, along with 
all the other methods of the REQUEST object; and then all the other 
callable objects as well?

Where is the basic Zope documentation?  Don't say "The Zope Book" 
because that jumps from too-basic to extremely complex within one 
paragraph, and it is missing a comprehensive object.method reference 
with syntax and examples.  There is a need for two Zope books - one to 
put the screenshots in (a programmer's reference doesn't need 
screenshots), for absolute beginners, and one programmer's / scripting 
reference with objects, methods, syntax, and examples.  Maybe even three 
books, the last being the high-level object-oriented architectural 
python-related stuff that most people don't need to know to write scripts.  

<flame>
Is it the intention of Zope Corporation to limit the use of Zope, by  
keeping easily understood and useful documentation away from the masses? 
 It sure seems this way.  This is my second or third attempt at learning 
Zope (without knowing Python - BTW, is that a prerequisite?) and each 
time I am frustrated by the lack of the type of documentation I can 
easily find for any other language (PHP, C) or a scripting reference 
(ASP, Javascript) or application framework (Midgard has excellent API 
documentation).  I am amazed that since Zope is all-powerful, that it 
has not used to build a site comparable to, say, 
http://www.php.net/docs.php.  The wikis are pathetic compared to other 
collaborative projectware and portalware (www.xoops.org), 
axisgroupware.org, dev.4arrow.com (a php-based Zope lookalike, although 
his documentation sucks REALLY bad).   I've never seen a calendar in 
Zope comparable to something like MS Outlook's calendar, which I've seen 
in other portalware products.    
Is Zope not up to the task; or is it that nobody except the developers 
really know how to explain how it's used; or is it that nobody knows how 
to write documentation?  Is it funding?  Hell, if someone just copied 
the table of contents from the PHP site, and then wrote comprehensive 
Zope documentation around that,  you might solve the Zope documentation 
deficit.  And then you would have more people who understood it and all 
the benefits that would bring to the community.
</flame>

How people have learned Zope thus far with the documentation available 
is beyond me.  It must be that I didn't grow up learning OOP in computer 
science like everyone does these days...

-Patrick Price