> What Zope offers, significantly, is an OO model that
> is entirely 
> web-oriented. Where a system like Squeak gives you
> an OO playground 
> based on a desktop-and-widgets working environment
> (not that you're 
> confined to that, just that this is what's offered
> as the starting 
> platform), Zope begins with a webserver's
> file-and-folders as the 
> working environment. For someone whose business card
> says "webmaster," 
> this is a comfortable place to begin; once that
> "webmaster" then begins 
> to explore the advantages of having a comphrensive
> object model, you 
> indeed get a wonderful system (Zope's inheritance
> and aquisition alone 
> are worth the price of admission, compared with most
> other web app 
> environments).

 Not to mention that zope is much easier to use in a
common large dev environment where your development is
split between graphics artists, html monkeys, coders
and admins.
 
 In many shops the devs will get together with the
artists and admins to design an application. The
graphics artists will usually mock up  most of the
application in html, then the junior coders will
insert templating script and controller code while the
more senior guys code up the business logic. 

 In zope the above is fairly strait forward and pretty
simple to do for all concerned. In the current web
frameworks available in squeak (and probably smalltalk
in general) the above type of development is difficult
or impossible.

> Admittedly, Zope is imperfect. It's learning curve
> isn't so much steep 
> as "jagged" (parts of it as easliy learned, others
> are learned at the 
> expense of handfuls of hair from one's scalp). The
> comprehensiveness of 
> the Zope object model is currently being severely
> tested, as the 
> version 2 line reaches the end of its usefulness.
> The challenge for 
> Zope.corp is to come up with a cleaner model with
> v3.

 Thats a very good way to put it! 

> It may not look stellar to the computer scientists
> among you, nor to 
> those of you steeped in "purer" OOP systems, but
> Zope represents a huge 
> leap in conceptual elegance compared with most of
> its rivals.
 
 Absolutly right.
 


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