[Zope] Zope reference documentation?

Dieter Maurer dieter@handshake.de
Thu, 16 Jan 2003 21:43:00 +0100


Patrick Price wrote at 2003-1-15 15:27 -0500:
 > 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.
What you want is not for a beginner either...

   The reference would contain hundreds of classes and thousands of
   methods.

   Few beginners would not read it and fewer understand it...

Use "DocFinder" (-->  <http://www.dieter.handshake.de/pyprojects/zope>)
to get a feeling of what you are looking for!

 > For instance, let's say I want to learn about something really basic, 
 > like what REQUEST.get does.
There are things that are so natural that there is no need to
document them!

  "get" is a generic mapping method. It has "key" as parameter
  and an optional default parameter (with default value "None").
  It returns the value mapped to "key" or the default (if "key"
  is not mapped).
  You find this information in the Python library reference.

  "REQUEST" is a mapping.

  Thus, you know, what "REQUEST.get" does.

 > ...
 > Where is the basic Zope documentation?  Don't say "The Zope Book" 
 > because that jumps from too-basic to extremely complex within one 
 > paragraph,
There will never be a documentation that answers all your potential
questions. If there were such a documentation, it would be so huge
that you would not find the answers to your questions.

 > and it is missing a comprehensive object.method reference 
 > with syntax and examples.
The size would be similar to that of the Oracle documentation:
several meters of documentation...



Dieter