[Zope] tino's <dtml-in> improvements Why, DC?

[Brian Lloyd]

> In the last year I have seen many people complaining about this with DC
> doing anything about it.
> Makes you think!

That's not quite true - there have been several discussions of 
this in the past, and we have not ignored it. There were (and 
still are - more below) concerns about namespace pollution and 
stomping on variables that people may have currently defined 
in applications. Some alternatives have been proposed, though
so far none have been implemented:

http://www.zope.org/Members/4am/DTMLWiki/NamedDTMLInLoop

http://dev.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Proposals/DTMLExpressionSyntax


> DC are pretty skilled py-engineers. If they don't want to use 
> sequence-item,
> then with what reason??
> So, DC, people what's so cool about sequence-item that you can't get with
> sequence_item?? What's the underlying reasoning here?

Largely a concern that the DTML namespace is too much like the 
wild west already, and that the changed names could break apps 
that have already defined "sequence_item" or similar names, 
either for their own simplification or for totally other purposes.

That said, I think that this has come up enough recently, clearly 
has support, and provides enough of a simplification win that it 
should go on the plan for Zope 2.4.

For those wondering "why not 2.3.1?", 2.3.1 is a bug-fix release, 
and this will be a feature with a non-trivial documentation impact. 
For more info see the Zope release policy:

http://dev.zope.org/Resources/ZopeReleasePolicy.html

Putting it in the next feature release will allow us to make sure 
the documentation is updated accordingly, and give people who may 
be stepped on by the namespace change a chance to assess their apps 
before upgrading.

People who need the change "Right Now" can continue to use the patch - 
in fact I'd encourage people to so we can shake out any problems. We 
should also make a project area on dev.zope.org so that we can have 
a common area to plan what still needs to be done (it sounds like the 
patch is close, but not 100%) and what collateral activities need to 
be done (what documentation artifacts need to be updated, etc.)

The 2.4 release will be largely about getting Zope on Python 2.1 and 
I am intentionally keeping the 2.4 plan relatively small so that we 
can get it out in Q2. I've added the DTML namespace changes to the 
plan at:

http://dev.zope.org/Resources/zope_240_plan.html

I'll need one person to volunteer to be the point man on this, to 
coordinate with me on integration and keep the project area up 
to date.


Brian Lloyd        brian@digicool.com
Software Engineer  540.371.6909
Digital Creations  www.digicool.com