[Zope3-dev] Using parent references rather than context wrappers to represent containment

[Phillip J. Eby]

At 07:22 PM 8/10/03 +0300, Steve Alexander wrote:

>>     3. Optionally allow vies wo implement 'IContained' and add
>>        'IContained' support to BrowserView.
>
>A content object does not contain its views. In the proposal you said "We 
>don't want to mix up containment with other associations".

For what it's worth, in peak.web a view's context is the view that it was 
found in, not the object it's adapting.  That is, if you have a content 
object O, with a container C, then a view Vo of object O will have view Vc 
of container C as its parent.  The overall structure looks like a ladder: 
parallel verticals of view-to-view connections and conent-to-content 
connections, with horizontal rungs of view-to-content references.

This structure allows a view defined for a containing component, to provide 
configuration for views of contained components.  If a view were to instead 
treat its adapted subject as its container, then it cannot do this.

Of course, all this may not be a useful point of comparison, because in 
peak.web, views also function as traversal adapters for the underlying 
component (which eliminates the need for the notion of "named views" or 
"named adapters").