[Zope] DTML discussion at the moment

[Alexander Staubo]

Martijn Faassen wrote:
>Tom Deprez wrote:
>>
>> I'm not that familiar with Python, ASP etc. But, do keep in
>mind that DTML
>> was created to give non-programmers the oppertunity to get some nice
>> webpages done. This idea should be kept the same. Perhaps
>one could create
>> two scripting languages : one which looks the same as a programming
>> language and one, with less capabilities, but which can be used by
>> non-programmers. Thus creating levels-of-use in the
>scripting language
>
>I think that this is the idea already! Right now, we have DTML
>documents/methods for HTML people. They can add some extra DTML tags to
>talk to SQL or things written in Python. SQL is there for the database
>people. Python is the full fledged programming language. for the
>programmers. You can write external methods in it, products, and
>apparently Digital Creations is working on a way to write Python safely
>from within the Zope management screens.
>
>What currently happens perhaps too often is that people (the
>programmers) use rather heavy-duty DTML tricks to accomplish things,
>because using Python is too hard for those small things right now.
[snip]

Yep, but we mostly do it because wrapping things in an External Method
is more painful than writing the equivalent code in DTML. Do a mistake
in writing the EM that you have to restart Zope. There is no provision
for writing the EM Python code through the Zope management interface --
for this reason I'd like to see a Script Method object which has a
text-area field where you can write Python code. It'd definitely ease
the transition to Python whenever this is needed.

--
Alexander Staubo             http://www.mop.no/~alex/
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