[Zope] - Yet another stupid question: image folders

[Jeffrey Shell]

> I'm looking for an easy solution, BUT... for example, in Frontier, yo
> ucan type something like:
> 
> #image "blah.gif"
> 
> And it will insert everything needed (including H/W tags).  This works
> even if you happen to have things stored in a subdirectory if I recall
> (it's been a while).  
> 
> I know that most sites Zope has been used for probably aren't that
> graphically intense, but a lot that I work on are, and I'd be 
> stuck with
> nearly a billion of these refernces or writing custom code 
> that probably
> is identical to other people's custom code.
> 
> For the object repository to be useful, it has to be able to 
> SIMPLIFY my
> life, not complicate it :-)

This is a heavily double-edged sword, as we've found a few times
ourselves.  As you start to simplify too much, being able to use and
re-use something in different situations becomes very difficult.  On the
other hand, if you make things too general, they become too hard to use.
:/ 

> So since I'm a glutton for punishment, why wouldn't a tag: 
> 
> 	<!--#var imagename--> 

But then you lose control over things like borders, javascript event
handlers, imagemaps, style sheet properties, and all of the billions of
combinations of tags.  If you're doing a graphic intensive site, I would
imagine that you would want finer control over your images and to be
able to take advantage of HTML that Zope-Image developers can't keep up
with.  WebObjects is engineered for these types of dynamic widgets, Zope
(like ActiveServerPages) isn't.  So while you don't get a single-line
#var insert, you do get tight control when you need it.  For example,
I've tried a few times to come up with a SELECT list tag that would
select a value already given by the user.  Sounds simple, right?  Not
with the flexibility I've often found myself yearning for (having to
compare a possibly set value against one or two other lists coming from
multiple sources and setting the presentation value and the widget
value).

The only major widget we have is the tree tag.  And, while it brings
incredible simplicity to generating hierarchical "tree" objects in HTML,
there have been many times where it's grown with new parameters and more
new parameters and even more new parameters to cover more and more of
the different ways Trees needed to be rendered.  Again, this is a fairly
general-purpose widget.  Specific widgets like images or select tags are
tips of very very big icebergs.