[Grok-dev] Re: Skinning/themeing

[Martin Aspeli]

Hi Lennart,


>> For this, I think we should embrace Deliverance. :)
> 
> I don't agree. And one reason for that is that viewlets get
> complicated, because you need to make a separate http request for each
> viewlet.

I only meant to promote Deliverance as a way of adding the final, visual 
look-and-feel, not in the sense of composing pages.

Let me choose a different word to "themeing" - "branding".

>> Plone very much wants to move in this direction, where ZPT's are used to
>> define page structure and shared elements (which are also good at)
> 
> Yes, but without a theming engine, we won't have any shared elements.
> Getting the viewlets there is a part of the theming. Plone solves this
> by using a macro, but that locks you into ZPTs only.

I think we're talking about different things, then. I don't think 
Deliverance is a good solution for composing page structure and shared 
UI elements. I think it's a good solution (conceptually, at least) for 
applying the designer's part of the process - making it look pretty, 
consistent and presentable.

>> plain-HTML theme files with Deliverance rule files are the way to go for
>> the end look-and-feel (which is much more designer-friendly).
> 
> This is how the planned engine specified by Martijn works too, So it's
> a deliverance type of theming engine, but inside of zope, and most
> importantly, it can do the theming with a context, which deliverance
> can't, since it's outside of the server.

I see. That sounds really nice. Do you have a link to these proposals?

Martin