Here is an update on DTML Templates, and a more in depth explanation of how they work. ** Update ** I've updated the DTMLTemplate product to allow commenting out block definitions and importing blocks using keyword arguments to the blocks() method. The new version is 0.3.0 Find DTMLTemplate at: http://www.zope.org/Members/halazar/Products/DTMLTemplate ** More Information ** Yesterday, Jonothan Farr (jfarr@real.com) asked about the differences between Templates and the var tag. Here's a short summary. The Template product consists of the "dtml-block" tag and the "DTML Template" document type. In a normal document, the dtml-block described below:: <dtml-block myblock> Block contents </dtml-block> works exactly like the following dtml:: <dtml-if myblock> <dtml-var myblock> <dtml-else> Block contents </dtml-if> In addition, blocks can be used to insert structured text directly into a DTML document (see the documentation for details):: <dtml-block mytext fmt="structured-text"> * this is * structured text! </dtml-block> DTML Templates use blocks in an additional way: to define DTML Methods that other objects can use. If the Template 'templ' contains the following lines:: <dtml-block myblock> Block contents </dtml-block> <dtml-block anotherblock> Another Block </dtml-block> Other, extraneous text. then 'templ' will have two block methods that other documents can access in this way:: <dtml-var "templ.myblock"> -> "Block contents" <dtml-var "templ.anotherblock"> -> "Another Block" Any document can also import all of the blocks of a Template into a local namespace:: <dtml-with "templ.blocks()"> <dtml-var myblock> <dtml-var anotherblock> </dtml-with> You can also refine blocks using Templates:: <dtml-block myblock> <dtml-var "templ.myblock"> with more stuff added </dtml-block> <dtml-var templ> yields:: Block contents with more stuff added Another block ** How is this stuff useful? ** I created Templates because I couldn't design complex and attractive web pages for Zope using Dreamweaver. I was always pulling out little chunks of HTML and putting them into individual methods. These chunks weren't valid HTML documents, so I couldn't edit them individually. With Templates, I create one document with all the HTML code I need, and block out regions of the HTML using dtml-block. I upload the templates (once!) to Zope, and instantly I've changed the definitions of all the template's block methods. If I need to make further changes, I can do it quickly in Dreamweaver. Templates really makes coherent web design with Zope workable. Hope this extra explanation helps. Michael Halle mhalle@media.mit.edu