[Zope] - How do I NOT acquire an object from a parent?

Amos Latteier amos@aracnet.com
Fri, 15 Jan 1999 09:37:37 -0800


At 01:01 PM 1/15/99 +0000, Jim Fulton wrote:

>
>We plan to support something like this in 1.10.
>
>I was thinking of either:
>
>  - DTML Documents and
>  - StructuredText Documents (that can use DTML)
>
>or
>
>  - A single DTML document that has an option
>    to process it's inoput through structured text
>    when it is compiled.
>
>Probably the second option is the way to go.
>
>Opinions?

I would like the option *not* to use DTML. For example, I often find myself
writing StructuredText Documents which use DTML examples, but do not want
to actually use any DTML. It can be difficult to easily escape DTML in
StructuredText. Also, I think for those who don't want it, it would be nice
to be able to turn it off. After all--I believe that DTML is cool, but not
necessarily central to the idea of an object that is meant to hold content.
(Not, this is not the case for templating, as opposed to content-holding
objects.)

Also, if we decide to go for a generic Document object with an option for
post-processing, I would advocate that there be a way to plug different
processors easily into it. For example, I might want my Document to hold
XML and process it with XSL (inspiration from Gabe Wachob). In fact, if we
head down this road I can see lots of interesting things, like processors
that do text filtering (like a frontier 'glossary' for example). We might
also want processors to be actual Zope objects, so that moving them around
in the object hierarchy changes how sub-Documents are processed. We might
want Documents to have mime types, and processors to be registered to
handle given mime-types...

I think Zope's content management facilities could be beefed up, and the
introduction of a new Document object is a good time to think about it. Not
that I'm volunteering to write all this ;-)

-Amos