[Zope-dev] WebDav Bug? -- And some comments on how great WebDAV is ;-)

[Brian Lloyd]

> Hi Brian,
> that proposal sounds very good to me.
> Could it be enhanced in a way that we can add an "add automatic extension
> when served by webdav".
> What I mean by that is that an object without extension is "seen" 
> as having
> say .html appended to it when it is access by webdav.
> So we can use all these extension based web authoring  tools without
> changing the python way of doing things.

This is an idea that has been kicking around for a while - I am 
somewhat resistant to it because I have been trying hard to fight 
for less magic in Zope. It is very hard to implement DWIM (Do What
I Mean) and have it do the right thing in all situations - it often
turns out to be fragile and easily broken as the system evolves.

That's not to say that we absolutely wouldn't do it - but there 
are enough internal ramifications and questions to be answered 
that I don't see how this would get done by 2.5. I'd be happy 
to see a proposal that addresses how deeply that magic would 
have to affect other parts of the system (as DAV support is 
largely implemented on top of other APIs) and the scope of 
the behavior and effort (I would expect that if DAV acted that 
way, then FTP should too).

<soapbox>

IMHO, I'd rather see the things that make using file extensions 
a pain in the first place go away. The "death to index_html" part 
of my proposal is a first step toward that. If web-oriented 
tools expect to be able to use file extensions, then Zope needs 
to do what people expect. 

If people trying to start using Zope are immediately stymied by 
bizarre issues with something that they take so for granted (file 
extensions), they'll never get far enough to see all of the things
that are great about Zope.

</soapbox>



Brian Lloyd        brian@zope.com          
Zope Corporation   www.zope.com