On Nov 12, 2006, at 12:56 PM, Hafeliel wrote:

--- Andrew Milton <akm@theinternet.com.au> wrote:

grumpy = getattr(container, "grumpy.jpg")

The edit view of grumpy.jpg shows me the Last Modified
time

I bet you are getting the last modified date from the image. The image has attributes inside of it.

Are you saying that you can not track down where the python code is getting the attribute from the image?

Now I try to investigate it by poking around in
Python. I write some code to look at any properties
that might have been saved for me, but not documented:

I don't understand... When I track stuff down, I look at the code. Thats part of the beauty of open source. You have the source right there to look at.

Also... I don't watch this email with an eagle eye, but why haven't you just asked? These guys are terrific at answering questions and pointers. Watch:

What module should I look at to help track down where the attributes of an image are coming from?

2] A user wants to buy a print of an image in the
gallery. He's a new user, so I get account
information and add it to my user list. Now I want to
log him in from a visually appealing web form. I know
this is possible, because I've seen other applications
do this.

However, I can't find any mention of this in the docs.

I slightly agree here but only slightly. Weitershausen's book gives a complete A-Z example of a web site including the login page, user management, etc. And Weitershausen frequents this list.

so you want to replace it with something that does
the same thing, just in a way you understand it.

Basically, yes. I want a tool that doesn't try to
protect me.

I think, actually, you do. The world of hackers causes web development to require a lot of security. Zope's, the tiny bit I've used, seems very flexible.

Please don't be mean. I've been a programmer since
1979. I've done a lot of things in this last 27
years. If I can't make a tool dance and sing within
two years of picking it up, then the chances are that
the tool itself isn't measuring up.

I use the exact same logic. "I've a smart guy; I've been swinging in the wind forever; If I can't make it work, its the tools fault."

But, that logic is simply wrong.

In my case, I have not done web development "forever". If I had, I would not have as many problems with Zope as I do and I would understand how, what, when, where much better. I get really frustrated... But I take a step back. In my case, I am frustrated not with Zope but with my expectations of what I should be able to do.

The fact of the matter is, PHP and friends have
greater market penetration, because "people" want to
do things the 'easy' way.

Exactly. The whole point of a tool is to make it easy
to get from point A to point B. PHP presumes that the
code is to be trusted and doesn't stand in the way.
Zope presumes that the code is suspect and is
desperate to keep me from getting to point B. The end
result is that I end up not using what Zope can do
because I do not want to deal with the roadblocks it
puts up.

That is mixing presentation and logic all in some
horrid markup. Engineers appreciate the way it
separates these things, and makes it hard(er) to
have ugly templates. PHP "programmers" are a dime a
dozen for a reason, "anyone" can do it.

No offence, but that sounds like a statement from an
ivory tower. I want a good separation of code and
template. However, I don't see why I should have to
suffer to get this.

Zope is a different beast, if you don't have good
engineering habits, you're not going to get very far
using Zope.

I think you have far too much faith in Zope as it
currently stands. Incomplete documentation is the
norm for OSS, but in most cases, this isn't such a big
deal. Most products don't try to protect you, so you
can easily find out the name of a function that
someone forgot to document.