Mr Greg Ward wrote:

* involuntary use: all my user interface code (DTML methods and documents) goes into this big mysterious object database. I have nothing against object databases, and I'm glad to see a free one for Python. But dammit, to me this stuff isn't data, it's *CODE* -- and code is far too precious to entrust to a database. I want it in a filesystem with full CVS control over it. I want to be able to back it up with tar or afio, one file at a time (or rather, restore it one file at a time, if need be). I don't want my code locked up in this big box of data.

I don't happen to mind the db holding my code, but like you, i also really really want the friendly familiar comforts of holding the code in the filesystem - CVS susceptibility, opportunity to grep to my hearts delight, why, even editing with emacs!! FTP access (which dtml in ZClasses still doesn't have - partly my fault, i had the prerogative but never found the time to do that) doesn't satisfy me, because the code is still either in the ZODB or in the filesystem, and i want the benefits of both. The upshot is that _my_ preference would be to have something like the provision for external methods, where stashed copies of the code is kept in the ZODB, synchronized (automatically, when zope's running in debug mode) with copies in the filesystem. This perspective, possibly shortsighted, is based on the procedure i (bravely admit i) use to edit ZClass dtml code, in the few projects where i do so. I maintain all my dtml in the filesystem, checked into cvs in the filesystem, edited with emacs, and (wheeze) i cut and paste using X and a handy emacs macro, into the pAthetic browser text widget. I'd be ever so happy if Zope would cut out that last step, and do the sync for me. (I would prefer that the autosynchronization were switchable in an acquired way, so i could set installations on a per-product basis, switching my production-sensitive products to a safer manual-sync setting, and my under-development ones to the sleeker autosync...)

Enough ranting for now. Guess I should do as AMK recommended and join zope-dev... sigh... I'll *never* get any work done now...

(I can't keep up with the traffic.) Ken Manheimer klm@digicool.com