Photographer: Unknown / Illustration by Brendan Davis

Eric Peter Germain - New ZopeMag editor.

I was born in New York City, where I attended the Bronx High School of Science and City College, graduating with a degree in English literature. I came to Berlin in 1966. My interest in editing came over translating (German into English, but on occasion the reverse). I've been translating technical texts (mainly articles on line technology in telecommunications) and medical articles for the last 15 years or so. While translating it struck me that the texts often had weaknesses in logical structure and explanatory power and I began editing the texts as well, making suggestions as to how they could be improved (in my estimation). These suggestions were generally well received – the authors often said that the English versions were better than their German originals – and so I became a combination translator/editor. It was about three years ago with the e-books for Zope documentation that my activities became focussed on editing. My background, aside from English literature, is mathematics – which is my first love. I have only limited knowledge of telecommunications, medicine or the Web, the areas I do translating and editing in. A basic principle of my editing is, therefore, getting the authors, who are experts in their respective fields, to give me fundamental explanations for things I find obscure in their texts or which I simply don't understand. Sometimes these explanations wind up serving as background information for me, enabling me to understand better what the text I am translating or editing is about; other times they are integrated into the texts because they give it a coherence it lacked at the outset. Among other things the inclusion of such information in an article depends on the audience we are speaking to and, of course, on how much space we have. It is this principle that will guide me in my work as editor of ZopeMag.

How were you first exposed to Zope?

I've never worked with Zope, except for playing around with it a bit in an attempt to gain some background for editing the beehive e-books. I was introduced to it by Mark Pratt, who was at that time the managing director of beehive. One day he approached me and said that he was interested in publishing documentation about the web application server and content management program Zope and would like me to work freelance for him editing the documentation (this became the e-books). I'd never heard of Zope and had no idea what "content management" meant. I well recall his first enthusiastic description of Zope when I visited him to discuss how we would manage the e-book editing: acquisition, security, authentication, Python, object-oriented programming, instances and classes – the concepts came tumbling out and I was soon listening but not hearing: I had no idea what was being talked about. I'd had some background in (simple) programming, indeed had taught programming for a while but for me this was an outgrowth of my interest in mathematics. I recall a long discussion with two published Zope authors, Nico Grubert and Kristoph Kirchner, when I was working on the first e-book in which they tried to explain to me what an "object" was: I had never done OOP. I began reading up on Python and it gradually became clear to me that many of the basic structures in Zope derived from Python. This and the discussions I held with the Zope developers at beehive enabled me to gain some idea of what Zope does and why it does it the way it does.

What are your goals for Zope Magazine?

Our goal is not only to publish informative and understandable articles on all aspects of Zope and its use but to make ZopeMag an important resource for the Zope community. We will be working together with some of the most experienced and talented authors, developers and users in this community. Our goal is to offer a professional and reliable product, which takes both dedication and money. I get paid for my editing activities and so will all of our writers. We welcome suggestions from people interested in writing articles on any aspect of Zope they have expertise in. This is an open invitation to everyone reading this interview: If you are interested in writing on Zope topics watch for our soon to be released writer's guide. In the meantime, if you already have an article or an interesting idea for an article send us a short description (a paragraph or two will suffice). We will get back to you in due time.

What would you like to see done differently?

I think the overall idea of ZopeMag is great but I find it's important not only to provide up-to-date information on Zope and Zope developments but also to put these into context. Accordingly, we will also accept articles on general topics, as well as on the practical use of Zope in real-world projects.

In addition to the product reviews and articles we will be publishing each quarter we are writing a series of “miniGuides” and “SuperGuides” as references for Zope technology. The articles in ZopeMag will be aimed at a variety of Zope users at different technical levels but we cannot include in the scope of an article all the background information necessary for an in-depth understanding. While we will also be publishing multi-part articles, the Guides and, as mentioned in the answer to the next question, the Glossary, will provide background and context.

Can you tell ZopeMag readers more about the “miniGuides” and “SuperGuides”?

The “ZopeMag miniGuides” will be short, concise guides to a particular Zope technology (for example, “Python Scripts”); in contrast, the “ZopeMag SuperGuides” will give in-depth overviews of core Zope design principles (such as the Zope user structure or acquisition). In addition, as a sort of link between the magazine and the Guides we will begin collating a Glossary of Zope and related terms. The short descriptions here will have links to other resources for background and contextual relevance.