roy, im only addressing a smallish part of your mail, which does convey, to me at least, a sense that you have things a bit back to front! i tend to agree that mixing python and DTML is hellish, from an aesthetic point of view if nothing else! to be fair, it was never intended for this purpose... my experience is that its too easy to keep cramming logic into DTML where you should really be putting it into python. i always feel bad doing it (a couple of hundred 20-30K dtml methods = an unmaintainable mix of presentation & logic), but i keep doing it because its quicker... and easy... the way forward is not trying to cram more logic into DTML, but less. python really is your friend! (though i guess its hard for people who came to python via zope, rather than zope via python - i should know, im one of them) better still, give zope page templates (zpt) a swirl: i find its a lot easier to avoid the nastier excesses i find myself perpetrating with DTML and it just feels like a better match for the task... the zope book has a couple of new chapters and a new appendix on zpt which is a good place to start... if you have more pressing, specific problems the list is usually a good place to look for help... hth, garry On 28 Feb 2002, at 23:39, Roy Mathew wrote: From: Roy Mathew <roy@anoobe.com> To: zope@zope.org Send reply to: roymath@yahoo.com Subject: [Zope] mixing python and DTML is hellish! Date sent: Thu, 28 Feb 2002 23:39:54 -0500
Folks,
I have been trying out Zope, and am now getting beyond the trivial. I do have a question about python vs DTML.
What I am finding is that mixing and matching python scripts and DTML (methods and documents) is rather hellish/confusing. For example:
o descending into python and then back up to DTML is hard, when you are trying to use acquisition. The python code does not understand contexts and acquisition in quite the same way as DTML.
o I am trying to use the SQL Session object from within a python script, and am having all kinds of difficulty.
I am starting to believe that it is cleaner (although not as powerful) to use DTML exclusively (and python only for that which is impossible in DTML). This' kind of saddens me as the "Zope Book" suggests that python is highly interchangeable with, and more powerful than DTML.
Am I totally off base? Is there some valuable reading that I have missed? How do experienced ZOPErs view this issue?
Roy.
_______________________________________________ Zope maillist - Zope@zope.org http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )
+-------------------------------------------+ Garry Steedman mailto:gs@styrax.com Styrax Associates http://www.styrax.com/ "The Good Man has no shape." +-------------------------------------------+