[Zope] DTML reformulated as XML

[Jacobs,David B.]

It has been great following the discussion so far.  I love Zope's
architecture and I'm glad what I consider one of its weakest links is
getting some attention.

Since people seem to be open to considering some radical ideas, I thought I
would throw my own into the mix.

I have a basic problem with all of these in-line extensions.  Be it
PHP,ASP,JSP,Cold Fusion or DHTML, I think there is a fundamental problem
with mixing layout with the generation of active/dynamic content.  Most
layout and graphic artist folks are simply not programmers.

I believe that a user should be able to use any HTML editor to produce a
basic mockup of the screen they want.  The development environment (read
Zope) should then provide a way to tie "active" behaviors to a pages
elements.  In this way you could tie a date validation procedure to a input
box element.  You could tie a table generation procuedure to table element
and a SQL Method.  You could tie multiple behaviors to the same element.

This provides much greater separation of layout and coding.  Using this
technique you can have a few programmers developing "active" behaviors for
users.  Users can then use their favorite editor to layout their pages and
then tie these behaviors to their elements separately.  The assignment of
behaviors to HTML elements would be outside of the HTML document.

I realize that I'm doing a lot of handwaving here.  I have a bit more detail
I can provide, but I don't want to overwhelm people.  If you have ever used
Elemental Software's Drumbeat 2000 product you get a little of the flavor of
what I'm looking for from a user perspective.

If you have looked at the XMLC product that the Enhydra project has
incorporated (www.enhydra.org) It provides some clues as to how it might be
implemented.  Basically the XMLC is a HTML compiler that compiles HTML/XML
to Java Document Object Model classes that can then be manipulated
dynamically to add active content.

Does this resonate with anyone :-).

Thanks for listening.  If people would like more details, just ask.

David Jacobs
djacobs@mitre.org
Pacific Operations


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