[ZPT] Truncating strings

[Tino Wildenhain]

Hi Ian, Shane,

Ian Bicking wrote:
> On Wednesday, October 22, 2003, at 11:28 PM, Shane Hathaway wrote:
> 
...

> 
> The problem with a Python expression is that the translation isn't so 
> good.  The expression will probably start out as something simple, like 
> "options/var/subvar", and only later do you want to format that.  It's 
> annoying to translate options/var/subvar to options['var].subvar, and 
> this way you avoid that.
> 

The most obvious problem is: ZPT is constantly extended for misuse.
 From what I know, ZPT or the PT part in it was originally meant
as a proposal for a templating mechanism. And in fact there are
several implementations yet in other languages (Was it php? was it 
Java?) (had to google for it, but I remember I read something
about this)
While Shanes path prefix proposal would at least have a meaning to
the other implementations, the constant use of fairly complicated
expressions in python with all their tal-define, python: prefixed
expressions and all makes a transition very hard.
And its completely diametric to what ZPT was about to solve:
a clean templating language for separation of code and design.

What on earth is wrong with preparing the data before use in ZPT?
Most of the problems are solveable yet with python scripts.

If the tools are not sufficient, why not improve the tools and
let ZPT alone?

Just my 0.02C
Regards
Tino Wildenhain