[Zope3-dev] Re: Namespaces considered harmful [Was: tal:define="..." considered harmful?]

Fri Feb 17 10:25:24 EST 2006

Stefan H. Holek wrote:
> My take is that it's not the TAL features (tal:define, python:, 
> whatever) that invite misuse, but the available namespaces.
> 
> I have ported ZPT to Django [1][2] and found the experience surprisingly 
> refreshing. Django naturally does not have anything like "container" or 
> "context" in the Zope sense. And by Django policy, templates don't even 
> get to see the "request". The namespace Zope PTs call "options" becomes 
> the sole, top-level namespace in Django PTs.
> 
> This very effectively keeps me from pulling-in anything not provided by 
> the view in the first place. Everything -- even functions I want to call 
> in, say, conditions -- has to be added by the view. The result is clean 
> and fast templates.

This sounds like best practice to me.

 > [2] http://zope.org/Members/shh/DjangoPageTemplates/1.0.2/readme.txt

I would even go a step further and leave the macro mapping to the view 
and write

   <html metal:use-macro="macros/master"/>

instead of

   <html metal:use-macro="templates/myapp/main/macros/master"/>

. Thus making the template more generic.

Tonico