[Zope3-dev] Re: Better access to APIs in paths

[Jim Fulton]

Shane Hathaway wrote:
> Jim Fulton wrote:
> 
>> Shane Hathaway wrote:
>>  >
>>
>> ...
>>
>>> Namespaces appeal to me in this context because you already have to 
>>> be aware of namespaces in order to write page templates (and, in the 
>>> not-too-distant future, XHTML).
>>
>>
>>
>> People never write namespaces in zpt, because they hate to.
>> Early on, we required namespace declarations and people hated them.
>>
>>  > So this proposal would let new users
>>
>>> move forward without learning many new concepts.
>>
>>
>>
>> Most zpt users don't know what xml namespaces are.
> 
> 
> Right, and that's why some implicit namespaces (like "dc" and "zope") 
> might be useful.  However, we're both aware of the problems that 
> implicit namespaces can cause, so that's a concern.

These aren't implicit. They are predefined. We already have two other
predefined namespaces in zpt:

- The namespace of expression types

- The namespace of top-level objects.


> But I would suggest that people's dislike for the TAL and METAL 
> namespaces may not apply here.  "tal:" and "metal:" are like Python 
> builtin names, in that they should always be recognized, whereas this 
> new feature is more like a Python import statement, in that the 
> namespace declaration gives the template access to some special feature 
> of the system that might not always be available.

I think all of the api namespas should be like builtin names, but
I don't think that there should be many of them.

I think the api namespace namespace hierarchy should be shallow and wide.

Jim

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