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

[Tom Deprez]

Ah, this I find a nice, correct and good explenation! Thanks for letting us
to see
inside-your-spaghetti-alike-mass-kept-together-with-the-help-of-your-skull.
  (Please, don't think anything behind this comment). I find you were
correct to make these syntax descission.

Hope this will end discussion about new syntax. Although, some
documentation would be nice. wink :-).

Tom.

>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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