[Zope] Stopping a <dtml-in>

Chris Withers chrisw@nipltd.com
Thu, 18 Jan 2001 09:26:41 +0000


Tres Seaver wrote:
> 
> The sentiment against "DTML-as-scripting-language" also makes
> introducing more control structures difficult to sell;  I don't
> buy that, myself, but have to listen to folks who do.

Well, DTML doesn't strike me as being designed to script in, so using it as such
is going to cause problems.

In my experience, any DTML with "" in it should have been done as a Python
Script, even if it's one line long ;-)

However, that doesn't mean something like <dtml-break> shouldn't exist, although
it's really treading that fine line, and it doesn't mean that 'DTML is bad' as I
used to think. DTML is great, if you use it like it was designed to be used; as
a templating language. That requries a bit of iteration, and maybe conditionals
are okay, maybe dtml-break falls in there?

However, if you start writing things like ZClass constructors in DTML, you very
quickly get unreadable, obtuse code that's hard to maintain.

I dunno, I wish I could get my head around HiperDOM/XHTML but it just doesn't
strike me as very approachable right now...

My $0.02...

Chris