[Zope] Why the new DTML syntax uses a hyphen rather than a colon

[Jim Fulton]

I'd like to clarify a point that keeps coming up in the DTML syntax
discussion, namely, the use of a hyphen, rather than a colon, as 
the prefix delimiter for DTML tags in the new DTML syntax.

The existing DTML syntaxes are *not* XML compliant.  DTML code 
is not XML well-formed in a whole host of ways. We absolutely 
intend, probably in the near future, to provide an XML variant 
of DTML.  I think that there will always be XML and non-XML 
variants of DTML.

When coming up with the new DTML syntax, I chose not to use
a colon because I thought, and still think, that using a colon 
would imply XML compatability that simply wasn't there.  Further, 
in the future, I want it to be easy to distinguish between XML 
and non-XML versions of DTML code.

So, in summary, the new DTML syntax doesn't use a colon
because it isn't XML.  The future XML-variant *will* make use of
XML namespaces and will use colons (e.g. <dtml:in>....).

Jim

Note that an advantage of the XML DTML syntax will be that
people will be able to use whatever nick-name they want for
DTML tags.  People will be able to use '<dtml:in>', '<z:in>',
'<jim:in>', '<zope-is-the-coolest-thing-since-sliced-bread:in>'
or whatever. <jim:wink>

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