[Zope-dev] friday afternoon comments on XML and Zope

[Josh Zeidner]

hello,

   I have been watching the activity on this newsgroup while developing a 
commercial system in Zope, and I feel I have made a few observations which 
might be useful to the Zope community at large.

   I am seeing a lot of similarities in the phylogeny of the XML spec and 
Zope.  Currently, I have been involved in finding a solution for the the 
transformation of structured data in Zope.  We ( myself and Damien Morton ) 
have been searching for a simple way of expressing selection and expansions 
of a tree-like data structure.  It seems to me the best way to express these 
type of problems is with languages like XPath and XSLT.  In addition, the 
development of a "zope data pointer" is remarkably similar to the problem 
that the drafters of the XLink specification are working out( in much larger 
numbers and levels of experience ).

   So... what I am implying is, as was touched upon before in a reply to one 
of my posts : is that if Zope were to be more tightly coupled to the XML 
specifiation, it would greatly increase Zope's user base and list of 
adaptable technologies.  Zope is just not ready and willing to have XSL, 
XPath, and Xlink plugged right in.  In order to use such non-proprietary 
technologies, custom logic must be applied to Zope: why should this be?  
Should Zope( being that it practically IS XML already  ) be more *XML 
compliant*?

   In a nutshell- more XML friendly features built into the core of Zope is 
something I would like to see in future releases.

   Other than that, thanks for all your responses- viva la Zope.

   -josh zeidner
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