[Zope] zopeNewbie Article on Acquisition

[Jeffrey N. Shelton]

Thank you for your feedback, Rik!

> I wonder whether the parts about inheritance weren't too difficult for
> someone without any knowledge of the subject.

Yes, I agree. But I wanted to try to put something together that was smaller
than a book. Plus, if someone has absolutely no background in OOP, then Zope
will be hopelessly beyond them. (Try explaining a DTML command like
<dtml-let item="_.getitem('sequence-item', 0)"> to a person who doesn't
understand namespaces.) My purpose was to provide a summary for people like
myself, who aren't programmers by trade, but who have gleaned a few
programming concept over the years. I read the term "attribute" and I think
I know what it means, but then I see the term "property" a few sentences
later, and I am not sure if the two terms are equivalent. The process of
writing helps me make such distinctions clear for myself. If I'm fortunate,
it will help others, as well.

> Moreover the relation with acquisition does not come to be completely
clear:

Tell me more! I want to know how to improve the descriptions so that they
are crystal clear.

> Once again, the part about the working of acquisition itself is great.

I'm blushing...

> One more remark: in the example, you take three folder objects at the
> same level as the basis for acquisition. While this is no problem in
> the example shown, in practice acquisition will act to do unexpected
> (at least for many users, not from design perspective) things if you
> use it on sibling folders.

Once again, tell me more! What kind of unexpected things happen? And in what
kind of situations is acquisition useful? Now that I understand how it
works, I can make Zope do what I want (kind of). But why is this better than
the old "one path, one result" system?

Thanks for taking the time to read the article!
(http://weblogs.userland.com/zopeNewbies/breadcrumbs/acquisition/)

Jeff