[Zope] DTML vs ZTP

[Vangelis Mihalopoulos]

Andy Yates wrote:

> I started out using DTML. I have since switched to page templates.
>

Same storie, as most of Zopistas around the globe i believe...

> So far I’ve never run in to anything I did in DTML that I could not do 
> in ZPT.
>

Well, this might sound unbelievable...
I was making an hierarchical announcement board system and needed to 
produce RSS for the active announcements in each board. I got my data 
from a ZSQL Method, but the data were non-ASCII [Greek, ISO-8859-7], and 
because i like being strict when it comes to standards, i wanted to 
produce UTF8 from this ISO-8859-7 text. The whole system was built using 
ZPT, so i really strived to do it with ZPT... after 2.5 hours of pure 
despiration, i concluded it was too complex and too buggy, so i did it 
in DTML.... got it working almost perfectly after 1h, even though i 
hadn't used DTML for some time!
I really couldn't believe it, because ZPT is XML and is supposed to 
easily produce HTML and XML structures...

In the general case though, i believe that DTML is to complex to read, 
and not designer-friendly. I have programmers builting login, even with 
bash scripting, and the templating is changed by the graphic 
designers.... a great advantages. Looking at older DTML code i've done, 
it looks dirty and complex, while ZPT is clear and elegant...

Sorry for the e-mail size ;)
Vangelis