[Zope] Methods - inheritence vs acquisition

Cary O'Brien cobrien@Radix.Net
Tue, 7 Mar 2000 20:33:30 -0500 (EST)


Ok, I've gotten pretty far with Zope this time.  But (of course), I've
got a bunch of questions.  Starting with...

1)  What is the algorithm for determining which method to call?  The
    DTML documentation says

  "attributes, including inherited and
   acquired attributes, of the client passed 
   in the call to the document template are searched"

   But in what order?   There can be an index_html in the class, in a parent
   class, or somewhere up the acquisition tree.  Which takes precedence?
   Does the product that a ZClass have anything to do with the search?
   What about Z-Super-Classes?  Inquiring minds want to know.

1a) Why can't I have a method in a ZClass, but then override it in
   the instance?  I.E. (Gaak, it has been a while since I've had to
   even think about C++) virtual methods?  (Or have I got that wrong).

2) It seems that the examples require the user to generate forms by
   hand, which seems unnecessary.  For example, (after a protracted
   struggle with the underlying python code) I wrote a method that would
   create an html table for any query, ripping the column names and data
   out of the result object.

   2.1) Shouldn't this be a standard part of Zope?
   2.2) If so, do you want this code?
   2.2) Likewise for property edit forms.  I did find some DTML that
        would do this, but shouldn't this be standard.

3) Anyone want to help me whip snmpy into shape and create soem
   nice Zope classes for accessing SNMP variables and tables in routers
   and such?  

Enough for now...

-- cary

cobrien@radix.net