[Zope3-dev] Re: ISite misplaced in zope.app.component.interfaces

[Philipp von Weitershausen]

On 10 Aug 2007, at 04:03 , Stephan Richter wrote:
> On Thursday 09 August 2007 14:59, Philipp von Weitershausen wrote:
>> When we moved stuff out of zope.app, we made the mistake of  
>> overloading
>> zope.component. I wouldn't want to make that mistake again. That's  
>> why I
>> don't think it should go into zope.component. I was once close to  
>> moving
>> ISite out of zope.app.component (and Baiju actually did it once  
>> without
>> discussing it first, IIRC), but Jim had doubts... I don't remember,
>> perhaps he can speak up :)
>
> I agree, the site concept is about locality, which is a concept on  
> top of
> zope.component.

I see no concept of "locality" whatsoever in zope.component.

>> By the way, I personally find the word "site" a bit misguided. An  
>> ISite
>> is not a "website". An "ISite" may often be used as the root  
>> object for
>> a website, but it can just as well be used for other objects in the
>> hierarchy.
>>
>> In fact, technically speaking, a "site" is just a place that has  
>> access
>> to a component registry. So "sites" are places in your object  
>> hierarchy
>> that allow component registrations, in other words, that allow the
>> alteration of component acquisition. (If you compare that with Zope 2
>> and the old-school attribute acquisition, every object was a site  
>> back
>> then. Now it's limited to very specific objects that provide ISite).
>>
>> I would much rather call this "place that has a component registry".
>> That's a bit too long, of course. "component place", or even better,
>> "component site" sounds short enough to me for a package name (e.g.
>> zope.componentsite).
>>
>> To cut a long story short, I'm +1, but zope.componentsite or so  
>> would be
>> much preferred to zope.site.
>
> I think "site" is widely understood term in Zope 3 now and everyone  
> knows
> about it.

Everyone who knows Zope 3. I do Zope 3 trainings frequently and  
"site" is just one of those terms that confuse a lot of people.  
Newbies tend to associate "website" with it, people with previous  
Zope experience seem to compare it to a CMF/Plone Site (which isn't  
too far fetched, exxcept that a CMF Site is so much more like a  
website than our site is).

> We gain absolutely nothing by renaming it.

I disagree. We have lots of clarity to gain.

 From my experience, explaining that sites are "places where  
component registrations can happen" has worked out much better than  
any other explanation. So why shouldn't we call them at least  
"component sites" to make clear that all they're really about is  
components (their registration and lookup)?