After two and a half weeks of tinkering with Zope, I have decided that I will ditch my conventional web technology for this new alien technology. It has already rewired half my brain, so I might as well go for a complete rewiring job. You sure you guys at DC aren't from another planet? ;-)
As another recent immigrant, welcome to planet Zope. If you think your brain is rewired now, wait till you experience the 'lightbulb effect' of acquisition! :)
Insterad of trying to explain this in words, below is a quick snippet of code illustrating the problem.
FRAMESET:
<frameset> <frame target=title src=<!--#var title_src-->> ... </frameset>
TABLESET:
<table> <tr> <td colspan=2> <!--#var title_src--> </td> </tr> ... </table>
I think you need to do a level of indirection to get to your goal. In the first instance (frameset) you want the contents of title_src. You get that via <!--#var title_src--> (as you said). In the second instance, you want the contents of the variable whose name is given by the value of title_src (I think that you should make title_src a property BTW). something like <table> <tr> <td colspan=2> <!--#var "_[title_src]"--> </td> ... </tr> </table> should work - well it did on my box! :) This is from Amos' guide to Advanced DTML (don't let the title put you off though). Available at http://www.zope.org/Documentation/HowTo/DTML HTH tone.