[Zope] The orphans=3 feature: votes for/against?

Casey Duncan cduncan@kaivo.com
Tue, 14 Aug 2001 11:56:45 -0600


seb bacon wrote:
> 
> <snip confusion about the value of orphan attribute>
> 
> > > The default value is 3. The online help will be updated
> > > in the next Zope release.
> >
> > I know we've covered this before, but the default value *should* be 0.  With
> > this question having popped up so many times in the last year plus, I'm not
> > sure why ZC hasn't changed it.  I noticed that this request is now "Pending"
> > in collector #2468.  If votes count for anything, I vote for zero.
> 
> At the risk of adding unecessary noise to the list:
> 
>   Me too.
> 
> I can't see how changing this will actually break anything, though it
> may mess up some layout.  It's so counterintuitive, it's like being
> given a bike to ride and then somebody telling you after two hours of
> you falling off, 'oh yeah, you can't ride it *forwards*, unless you
> press this switch under the mudguard.'  At least, that's how I felt
> about it the first time I spent a day trying to work out what was
> going on.
> 
> seb
> 

I agree, this "feature" is needless newbie hair-pulling fodder. and is
especially insidious since 

<dtml-in "foo" size="1">

actually works as expected a lot of the time, but will bite you where it
counts when you're not looking. Everytime I teach a Zope class, people
comment about this. I usually throw in: "Just be glad overlap doesn't
default to -1" think about it 8^)

A slightly more graceful fix (which has been suggested before), which
would break less code would be for orphan to default to size-1 with a
maximum of 3. Although this might even be *more* confusing.

There are lots of things wrong with dtml-in. Hows about we just
deprecate the whole damn thing and start over?!? Seriously.

-- 
| Casey Duncan
| Kaivo, Inc.
| cduncan@kaivo.com
`------------------>