[Zope-dev] Why are width and height strings?

[Terry Hancock]

I've run into a weird problem with product development
(VarImage product):

Since I inherit from Zope's 'Image' object, I get and use
its width and height attributes -- which I blithely assumed
were integer properties.

But they're not -- they're strings. (At least in Zope 2.6.4
they were).

Why? There doesn't seem to be any logical reason for that,
since the only sensible values are integer numbers.

Things get weird when you set them to integer values and
then try to use Zope's management screens to set them,
which I'm currently trying to fix as a bug in VarImage.

Is there some compelling reason why they should be strings?

I'm thinking about overriding this, because it doesn't
make any sense to me, but I'm curious if there was a
rationale behind it (and whether I'm creating a whole
new group of bugs if I do that).

Cheers,
Terry

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com