The Open Source Zone

Unfortunately this book is getting somewhat dated and if you don't have the inclination to check on the things it says or get involved with the on-line community you might find yourself rather out of date. Most of the core concepts of Zope are still somewhat the same. However the book does miss some areas but it is a good primer. It's, in my opinion any ways vastly better than The Zope Book which is very poorly written, unfriendly, confusing and all around not good. I recommend this book for people who already understand Python and have developed web applications in the past using other technologies. That's not to say this book isn't a good primer, it's still fairly good for that too. But expect to back up your reading with some IRC conversations in #Zope irc.freenode.net best of luck all you Zopers.

This book has had a slating from several reviewers, mainly due to the fact that the code supplied for Chapter 3 doesn't work as is - at least on current versions of Zope. I found that by removing the quotation marks from all the dtml-sqlvar variables it then worked perfectly, and the code from chapter 4 had no issues at all.<p>Other than that, this is a fine introduction to many aspects of Zope and well-known Zope products, though perhaps becoming a little outdated now (summer 2003) with the advent of Plone and the imminent(ish) release of Zope 3. There are some typos, and the book is written in a charming European English: these shouldn't cause you any real problems.

I'm a newbie to this Zope, and would really like to see some working examples of this product, so I can at least compare what is correct to what is in this book. None of the examples I've come across so far work! What's worse; I cannot figure out what's wrong with them because I DO NOT KNOW ZOPE YET! I bought this for $., and I guess for examples, its ok. But man, if you want to come across as an authority in something, it wouild be helpful to make your books' examples workable.

I have shelved this book at least three times in disgust and frustration. Each time I pull it from the shelf, I think: "There must be SOMETHING useful in there". Hours later, I re-shelve it again, wondering why I don't just throw this amazingly content-free book away. All the other comments about typos etc. are absolutely true. This book takes a confusing subject, adds 500-odd pages to it, and does absolutely nothing but leave the reader at the starting point, wishing for the hours of his/her life back.

I have just retured from a trip to the dumpster; after tearing my hair out for two hours over the example in Chapter 3, I have rediscovered why I rarely trust books from this publisher. The example, as written, does not work, and the publisher has not offered any sort of errata for this book. If anyone would like a free copy of this book, go comb the Rockland landfill.<p>Aside from the untested and unproofed examples, the text was rather disjointed, and provided a skimming the surface view of Zope that seems to offer precious little foundation in the system. The open source book, provided at [web address] has been far more helpful, and cheaper to boot.