evan@4-am.com wrote:
Exactly. You've just described the "components" aspect of this idea, which was left out of the Paul's original post. A component is just a tag marked with a special attribute that names it (and its path, if it has been saved). It can contain other components, and can have "slots" -- subtags whose contents are not part of the component. There is also the concept of "modes", which allows you to have different versions of a template for different system states (shopping cart empty vs. non-empty) that radically affect presentation.
I viewed components and modes as implementation details. The proposal just suggested that designers should have reuse across pages. I viewed (and still view) components as a good idea, but definately magic that might or might not fly. It might tip the cognitive scales too far for average site designers, especially if there are other areas of magic in the implementation of the proposal (like implicit templates). Let's just have the proposal say reuse is good and then figure it out later. Same for modes: let's just say the important areas in DTML will be covered, and find out later whether <dtml-if> and <dtml-in> can be covered w/out sacrificing the really important parts of the proposal. --Paul