[Zope] ANNOUNCE: EXPERIMENTAL DTML Syntax change

Jim Fulton jim@digicool.com
Tue, 15 Jun 1999 09:06:18 -0400


Zope 2.0.0 alpha 2 (and public CVS) includes an experimental change to the 
DTML parser to allow HTML tags syntax and character entity reference as
an alternative to the server-side-include (SSI) syntax.  Basically, source
like:

  <!--#var standard_html_header-->
  <ul>
    <!--#in objectValues-->
      <li> <a href="<!--#var URL1-->/<!--#var id-->/manage_workspace">
           <!--#var title--></a>
    <!--#/in-->
  </ul>
  <!--#var standard_html_footer-->

to be written as:

  <dtml-var standard_html_header>
  <ul>
    <dtml-in objectValues>
      <li> <a href="&dtml-URL1;/&dtml-id;/manage_workspace">
           <dtml-var title></a>
    <dtml-/in>
  </ul>
  <dtml-var standard_html_footer>

This format is provided to overcome some of the problems
with the SSI syntax:

  - It looks more like and fits in with HTML,

  - It is easier to type,

  - It is easier to type and slightly less verbose,

  - It is, perhaps, easier to teach HTML editors how
    to deal with it.

I'm very interested to hear how helpful this is.  Do people
find this a significant improvement?

If people don't find it useful then it will not be included
in Zope 2.0 final, and perhaps not in the Zope 2.0 betas.

Note:

  - This format does *not*, in my mind, significantly reduce the desire
    for an XML variant of DTML.  I think there is room for *both* XML
    and non-XML variants of DTML, if only because sometimes people will
    need to have DTML documents that are not XML well formed, for
    example when generating non-XML text.

  - This does not address the desire for a nicer through-the-web scripting
    language for Zope.  We intend to provide the ability to build Python methods
    through the web that are as safe (from a security point of view) as existing 
    DTML methods.

Jim

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