[Zope] Uses of METAL?

[Richard Jones]

On Wed, 6 Nov 2002 7:46 pm, David Hart wrote:
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but unless METAL is used with only very
> limited, well-defined and/or non-nested bits of included stuff, using
> METAL makes it very difficult to edit the layout of ZPT pages with
> external design tools like Dreamweaver. Ever tried to change the look of
> Plone with Dreamweaver?

I believe you are correct. A tool like Dreamweaver benefits more from having 
its own library of HTML/TAL fragments which may then be inserted where 
needed. Editing the library item will then allow across-the-site changes 
happen in a similar manner to METAL.

This is used to good effect in the Bizar Shop product which ships with a large 
selection of library items, and uses no METAL.

METAL is used in my Roundup project (http://roundup.sf.net/) to provide a 
"page" template (I call the page macro defined "icing" ;) which provides a 
facility that nothing else could (well, not in the constraints of well-formed 
HTML that TAL works in).


    Richard