[Zope] Quick question about <dtml-if ...>

Harry Wilkinson harryw@nipltd.com
Wed, 8 May 2002 14:32:52 +0100


> > Heh ;)  It's standard now, you should find 'Page Template' in the
> > dropdown list of things you can add in the Zope management interface.
> >
> > For a bit of an intro:
> >
> > http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/ZPT1
> > http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/ZPT2
> > http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Articles/ZPT3
>
> Ok, now I know what you're talking about.  I looked over this stuff some
> time ago.  But to be perfectly honest, I hate XML (I'm sorry, IMO XML is a
> data structure not programming language) and I (found/ still find) the
> whole concept to be much more confusing than DTML. ;-)  Maybe it's because
> I don't use WYSIWIG editors (all my PHP is done in vi and I've done all the
> Zope stuff I've done from within the ZMI).
>
> It's a cool concept, I'll give it that, but I think my brain will explode
> if I try to now convert some 400 DTML documents over to ZPT.  ;-)
>
> I've actually been working with DTML for about 2 years now, but am only now
> starting to get into making a website I manage "dynamic".  Shit, I've got
> some DTML stuff nested so deep ... eek!  ;-)  And, I'm just now starting to
> learn Python.
>
> Thanks again for the suggestion, though.

Well that's furry muff, if you don't want to use it.  I don't use it because
it plays nicely with HTML editors, though (I don't remember the last time I
used one, it was bloody ages ago), I use it because it's got excellent
seperation between content and presentation.  As for XML not being a
programming language... ZPT isn't a programming language, it's a templating
language.  DTML is, well.... to me, DTML occupies some fuzzy ground in the
middle where it's got the templating stuff but it's all mixed up with the
programming aspect, and it gets easily confused.