[Zope-dev] HiperDOM & xmlc

[Shane Hathaway]

lalo@hackandroll.org wrote:
> The only thing I _don't_ feel good about this kind of template
> is that, in practice, we will probably lose the benefits of
> things like <dtml-var standard_html_header> - meaning, when you
> want to change the header of your site, you'll have to edit all
> your templates.

I agree this is a problem, and speaking from experience, changing all
templates is not an acceptable compromise.  For www.zope.org that would
mean including the standard template in nearly every page, everywhere,
because the pages on www.zope.org are nearly all "templates"
themselves.  We would lose one of the primary benefits of Zope.

Another unacceptable compromise is including a variant of
standard_html_header and _footer on every page (as is done now).  One
reason is because it is not possible to write
standard_html_header/_footer using well-formed XML.  The header begins
the "html" tag, while the footer ends it.  In fact, most sites these
days put the beginning of a table in _header and the end of the table in
_footer.  Objects containing non-well-formed XML aren't compatible with
a DOM-based solution.

This has been one of the points of discussion here at DC.  The only
reasonable solution we've come up with is automatically wrapping the
results of the rendering in an acquired object with a fixed name such as
standard_page_template.

The other solution that I have tried to wrestle with is introducing some
kind of multiple view system with automatic selection of the default
view.  But in reality, the standard_page_template solution would make
the multiple view system possible as well.

So what does everyone think?  Is standard_page_template the right thing
to do?  Is there a better way?  Help!

Shane