-----Original Message----- From: zope-admin@zope.org [mailto:zope-admin@zope.org]On Behalf Of Tim Wilson Sent: Friday, August 20, 1999 6:57 AM To: Zope Listserv Subject: [Zope] DTML Documents vs. Methods--Again? Yikes!

Greetings:

I've been trying to figure out the difference between DTML Documents and DTML Methods. I'm reading the available docs, but true enlightenment still eludes me. :-)

What are the tradeoffs in using these two seemingly similar objects? For example (and please feel free to expound on this), why is standard_html_header a DTML method and index_html is a DTML Document? Are there ZODB performance issues?

The difference between a DTML method and a DTML Document, as I see (used) it is that - a DTML Method has no properties of its own because it is a method (except for title and id). Thus it uses the properties of the object it is called from. Example: a folder has a property author. If you call author from the DTML Method it will return the author property of the folder. - a DTML Document is a _separate_ _object_ with its own properties. To continue with the example above: if the property 'author' is set in the DTML Document, calling author in the document, it will return the author property of the document, not that of the folder. THere may be a confusion, however, because if the DTML Document has no property author acquisition will make it return the author property of the containing folder. If I recall it well, the DTML DOcument was added later because DTML Methods did not have properties of their own. The difference in behaviour make DTML Methods most useful for separated DTML code (such as a reusable tree or index) to be included in other documents. Thus if you have a folder with both DTML Methods and DTML Documents, where the DTML Documents contain the content and the DTML Methods only code, you can create a folder index which only lists contents by creating a DTML Method (called 'index' or something) which lists only DTML Documents. Does this make it any clearer? Rik Hoekstra