Yes, I think you are right about collapsible trees getting in the way when debugging. Where trees are useful is when you don't know what you are looking for, i.e. newbies trying to understand Zope, so I think there's still a case for it. I don't really use it these days, but I used to use it a lot when I started out with Zope, so I think its main benefit is to newbies anyway. The occasions when I do use it are when I want to track down disappearing cookies, or authentication problems; how do others use REQUEST, if at all? Perhaps a switch / cookie which records your preference? seb * Andreas Jung <andreas@andreas-jung.com> [011030 11:15]:
Feel free to extend the HTML representation for REQUEST using __str__ or the ascii represenation using text(). But for debugging purposes a collapsable tree is more unhandy than usable because clicking in a large tree takes to much time to find the informations you are looking for.
Andreas
From: "seb bacon" <seb@jamkit.com>
The REQUEST __str__ representation can be useful for tracking down bugs, and is a useful didactic tool for newbies. I wanted to get feedback on some ways it has occured to me that it might be improved. If it turns out to be a good idea, I'll do a fishbowl proposal (one day...)
In its simplest form, it would be nice if it were a collapsable tree, so you could examine just the bits you were interested in.
I think it would also be really handy to extend this concept, for example adding nodes to the AUTHENTICATED_USER branch, which show local roles, roles, etc. Perhaps automatically, through introspection?