Somebody called Kemalus (can't find his email address) wrote this http://www.zope.org/Members/Kemalus/smart_using_namespace He says that <dtml-var foo> is better than <dtml-var "REQUEST.form['foo']"> "This allows your code to be more readable, hence more maintainable." I disagree! Looking back at old DTML I find myself wonder sometimes, "which namestack is this expected to come from?" In <dtml-var foo> 'foo' could be a method, a template, a property or any of the many REQUEST dictionaries. So debugging <dtml-var foo>, you have to search in all of this possibilities, whereas with <dtml-var "REQUEST.form['foo']"> can only come from one place. No offense Kemalus. I just constructivly critize. Readability isn't about the number of characters of text or the number of quotation marks. What do the others think? Peter