[ZDP] Teaching Newbies ZPT

Chris McDonough chrism@zope.com
13 May 2003 15:51:27 -0400


On Tue, 2003-05-13 at 15:26, Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
> Chris McDonough wrote:
> > On Mon, 2003-05-12 at 12:18, Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
> > 
> >>So, this might sound kind of radical, but couldn't we change the default 
> >>index_html from a DTML method to a Page Template? Furthermore, is there 
> >>any reason to still keep standard_html_header/footer around? I'm certain 
> >>that at least index_html as Page Template would change a lot in the 
> >>behaviour of newbies.
> > 
> > I'm not all that keen on changing the stuff; it's not (yet) broke. ;-) 
> 
> But would it break when we'd convert at least index_html to a Page Template

Probably not changing index_html, because it would only happen for new
users (whom have no existing site dependencies).  But removing
standard_html_header/footer it would likely break 3rd party apps that
depended on their existence.

> > However, if you feel strongly about it, I'd consider bringing it up on
> > the Zope maillist and proposing it for Zope 2.8.
> 
> 2.8? When's that gonna be? Before or after Zope3? *g*
> Seriously, forgive my impatience, but do you think the feature plan for 
> 2.7 is *that* tight?

It *should* be.  2.7.0 is months overdue, and there is still a
significant amount of work to be done to make installation and
configuration work properly and to verify that things work properly
under Python 2.2.  The TODO is available in the doc directory of the
trunk.

That said, I probably should have said "2.7.1" instead of 2.8, as that
will be much closer and you're right that it wouldn't be an
earth-shattering change or anything.

> > The tutorial was written before ZPT existed... it badly needs an
> > update.  It hasn't been touched in years.  Unfortunately, it will only
> > continue to rot until someone gets indignant enough to update it. 
> > Perhaps this can be proposed for Zope 2.8 as well?
> 
> It should be proposed, no question about that. But again, 2.8 is miles 
> away. Heck, it the "someone" is a problem, I volunteer to update the 
> tutorial. I won't take that much time.

Great!  (See, someone got indignant enough to volunteer ;-)  The
tutorial isn't a piece of the framework, so I'm certain updates to it
would be accepted for 2.7.0 were they finished on time.  If not, then
they could definitely go into 2.7.1 (as opposed to 2.8).

- C