[Zope-CMF] Re: Method Aliases

[Kapil Thangavelu]

On Tuesday, September 30, 2003, at 11:58  AM, Tres Seaver wrote:

> On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 14:46, Kapil Thangavelu wrote:
>>
>>
>>> The view method allows to add a simple +'/view' to urls.
>>>
>>> www.example.org/foo/view
>>>
>>> is an alias for
>>>
>>> www.example.org/foo/document_view
>>> -or-
>>> www.example.org/foo/newsitem_view
>>> -or-
>>> www.example.org/foo/whatever_the_default_view_is
>>>
>>>
>>> But we can't get rid of these urls, because we can't use them in
>>> actions.
>>
>> why is getting rid of these urls a good thing? what use cases does it
>> solve?

<snip>

>> the only justification i'm seeing for this feature is that pretty urls
>> are good for being pretty, or features for features sake. if i'm
>> missing something please enlighten me.
>
> "Pretty" isn't the issue;  "meaningful" is.  Many clients, for  
> instance,
> expect filename extensions, but Python methods can't have them.
> Likewise, aliases allow localization of the otherwised Anglo-centric
> method names.  Users *do* look at URLs, often before clicking through  
> to
> links, in order to get clues about what to expect on the other side.
> The current name-mangling is an undesirable artifact of using
> acquisition to find software;  aliases put back "natural" names for
> methods.
>

thanks for the reply, tres

while i agree with those principals, i find looking at the current  
state/reality of the web to be a far cry from it. here are some example  
urls from sites i went today. i think the reality here is that  
*developers* look at urls, users have become so inured of the current  
state of application servers that urls like those below are taken for  
granted, to the extent that i would posit, users rely on navigation  
systems for semantic context almost soley.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/102-3479385- 
4471337
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20030930/ 
ts_nm/bush_leak_dc
http://store.apple.com/1-800-MY-APPLE/WebObjects/AppleStore.woa/72601/ 
wo/SUwYS87rbaxu2T37RuL1vqDg2ac/0.0.7.1.0.5.21.1.1.1.1.0.0.1.0
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/09/30/ 
170259.shtml?tid=103&tid=117&tid=185&tid=99
http://www.computerweekly.com/articles/ 
article.asp?liArticleID=125053&liFlavourID=1&sp=1
http://go.vicinity.com/mbe/ 
GeoFind.d?E=sPaM9SYDqSw6R6pi&AD4=USA&AD2=1001+E.+Mentor+St&CITY=pasadena 
&STATE=ca&ZIP=91106

i realize the alias mechanism solves a more generic case of the  
extension issue in that it will work for object methods, but afaics  
nothing prevents using directory view types with extensions.. ala  
document_view.html.pt which can be directly referenced in the action.

since imo, users are using navigation mechanisms, i18n of urls seems to  
be of questionable value.. compared to i18n of action  
names/descriptions in the ui, though i confess i remain ignorant of  
i18n issues in general.

anyways, i think the writing is on the wall here, the code's in cvs,  
and i'm late to the party.  so i fold my cards. it looks as though i  
can work around these 'features' since alias names can be discovered  
given an object, although working around the pretraversal hook will  
require some detective work...

cheers,

-kapil

>