AMK wrote:
>I've scribbled together a whitepaperish overview of Quixote;
>see http://www.quixote.ca/overview/ .  Comments, suggestions,
>additional text?

Maybe with the mod_python diagram, add a bit more text indicating why
or why not to use mod_python, as you did for the other approaches.

I also think the blank http://www.quixote.ca/ home page needs to have
something, anything more on it, at least to link to the main Quixote
home page and perhaps to show that there's some content now at
http://www.quixote.ca/learn/

-==-

I have nothing else useful to add for the whitepaper, but I do have a
couple of documentation related thoughts, as someone about to try out
Quixote -- hopefully in July, for now I'm reading everything I can
get my hands on about it.

I would very much like to see a meatier, friendlier "Installing
Quixote" document than the one at:

http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/quixote/doc/INSTALL.html

Perhaps I'll write something up once I've successfully installed it.
Some background:

My little company currently builds web applications with ASP
(VBScript), MS SQL Server 2000, HTML, ECMAScript, XML, XSLT, and CSS,
and (not nearly enough) Python.

That's 8 languages in all, leading to ugly code that's not easily
testable and a process that's not easily teachable to my team.

I've been writing on my weblog (http://www.skippingdot.net) for over
a year about moving out of the Microsoft world and into Open
solutions, but I haven't made much real progress with my most
important applications.

We use Python scripts to generate other code, and we use Zope for
ZWikis and Squishdot and Issue Trackers, but I've recently realized
that Zope is probably too much complexity for our own applications.

That realization came after PyCon when I looked at my list of 8
languages, and thought about adding ZPTs and removing some of the
list items.

Then I had the a-ha moment, "What if it was just Python and XHTML?"
There had to be a way to get rid of the rest, save perhaps for a
single static CSS file I could write once and forget about.

I found a lot of options and diligently narrowed them down to Quixote
and Webware. Both solutions would let me just work in Python and
generate my XHTML output. I'll stay away from Webware's PSPs, but
their WebKit and FormKit/FunFormKit look like a very solid approach
for Python-based web app development.

But Quixote's PTL looks even better to me than WebKit, and I
appreciate your ZODB examples and know-how, as I hope to handle
persistence in the same way in my apps.

I'm a long-time SQL programmer, and SQL is where my strength has been
historically, but I'd rather get more done than write more stored
procedures.

So I installed Webware a week ago and expect to actually get around
to trying to use/evaluate it in July (we're always running at
capacity over here, so these "vision" things end up low on the list).

The reason I installed Webware first, and will be trying it out
before Quixote, is that the Webware install docs:

http://webware.sourceforge.net/Webware-0.7/WebKit/Docs/InstallGuide.ht
ml

..were far more helpful. They weren't perfect, so I took notes in
gEdit, documenting my entire install process as I went through it,
including my missteps as a relative Linux and Python and Apache
newbie.

Once I've refined it a bit, I'll submit it to the Webware crew so
they can tweak their docs or link to it as "The Absolute Beginner's
Guide" to installing Webware.

I realize Quixote is not intended as a tool for beginners, but for
other people like me who know a great approach when they see it, and
just need that extra boost to get started, I think the install docs
could use some attention.

If I don't fall totally in love with Webware in July, and I do get
around to installing Quixote (probably with this help of this list
given the docs), I'll be happy to contribute an expanded install
guide / article, as I'd be writing it for myself and my staff anyway.

Thank you to the entire MEMS-Exchange team for the gift of Quixote,
and especially to AMK and anyone else involved in the documentation
effort.

Yours truly,

Shane McChesney
President,
Wesearch Information Services Inc.
http://www.wesearch.ca