[Zope3-dev] Re: i18n domains vs. unique message ids -OR- why Shakespearean English was better

[Stephan Richter]

On Wednesday 20 August 2003 08:23, Martijn Faassen wrote:
> Stephan Richter wrote:
> > Due to the lack of other viable suggestions, I implemented this version
> > and checked it in.
>
> Oh, joy, just implement it and check it in the middle of the discussion
> because you can't see a viable suggestion..

Absolutely. We had a problem with I18n that had to be solved. I did not see 
any other way to solve this problem soon. If ZCML is rewritten in the way you 
suggest, then all ZCML has to be updated anyways, so this change too. Until 
this happens (if ever), this solution has been agreed on by the people that 
do the work.

> > While Godefroid and Martijn argued heavily for other options, they would
> > require serious changes in the ZCML framework, which would require a
> > detailed proposal.
>
> You could've told us that before checking it in. :)

What would it have changed? You can still make a proposal and if accepted 
implement it and revert this change. No big deal; it won't hurt my feelings.

> > Note that we just came out of a ZCMLgeddon and everyone who looked
> > at the results closely likes it a lot, so that it is very unlikely that a
> > proposal for a rewrite will be accepted.
>
> Okay, so that if we write such a proposal you tell us it wouldn't be
> accepted anyway, so why bother, huh?

Guido has done that before. He wrote a proposal that was immediately rejected, 
just to demonstrate that the issue was discussed. 

However, this is besides the point. It might be as well that you get enough 
momentum and the proposal is accepted, but this is still only the first step. 
Someone has to implement it. Jim spent almost two weeks on the recent ZCML 
rewrite, so who would be willing to spend two weeks implementing this 
proposal?

> ZCML is an XML format. We should at least make some attempt to be
> XML-ish here. The current implementation of the message id is in effect a
> hack if you look at matters from an XML semantics point of view. Semantics
> are introduced which are very hard to capture in an XML schema. I hope
> we can at least agree in principle that the current implementation is a
> hack and that we should look for ways to improve the situation.

I do not like the current solution that much that I would defend it to the 
end, but it saves a lot of verbosity, which is great. Bloated ZCML would be a 
pain to work with.

Personally I do not think that XML was chosen for configuration to use XML and 
all its semantics, but because it looks familiar to people and we were able 
to limit the functionality. A Python version would have been too powerful and 
intrigued us to do too much during configuration. 
(Disclaimer: This is solely my personal opinion.)

Regards,
Stephan
-- 
Stephan Richter
CBU Physics & Chemistry (B.S.) / Tufts Physics (Ph.D. student)
Web2k - Web Software Design, Development and Training