[Zope-dev] Can I get rid of standard_template.pt?

[Matthew T. Kromer]

Stefan H. Holek wrote:

> --On Freitag, 10. Mai 2002 08:27 -0700 Andy McKay <andy@agmweb.ca> wrote:
>
>> But... when you restart Zope it recreates them all again for you :)
>> However you can delete the "Examples" and not have them come back ;)
>
>
> I think it was Matt who pointed out to me that I could create harmless
> substitute objects (say, Files) for the things I do not want autocreated.
>
> -) Delete session_data_manager
> -) Add File named session_data_manager
> -) Voila, core sessions disabled
>
> This will however not help you if your intention is to "unclutter" the 
> root folder...
>
> Regards,
> Stefan


My apologies for jumping in to the discussion a few days late, but I saw 
my name ;)

I have mixed feelings on some of the reserved names in Zope.

On the one hand, I certainly understand that people want to be able to 
customize *everything* and that means being able to delete things etc 
from the root folder.

On the other hand, we want to have a known 'stable base' which is pretty 
much guaranteed to exist for product writers, to facilitate 
interoperability.  

What we don't have is a good way of saying "I *know* I can shoot myself, 
but I swear if I do I wont bleed on your carpet."  

So far, my preferences are for the latter; that is, I would prefer a 
well-defined area that has known contents.  Like them or not, that 
includes the standard_* pages as well as various other objects.  In the 
Zope 2 context, being able to know things exist by name without having 
to go through gyrations to confirm them is highly useful.  To my mind, 
this utility outweighs the "clutter" aspect.  Said differently, the 
small benefit of the common names multiplied by the broad general user 
base has a higher value of the large benefit (to the beholder) of the 
aesthetic root folder multiplied by a small user base.

And, as Andy has pointed out, you can easily go tweak the reserved names 
out of the source.

-- 
Matt Kromer
Zope Corporation  http://www.zope.com/