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

[Tres Seaver]

On Thu, 2003-02-27 at 08:53, Shane Hathaway wrote:
> On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Chris Withers wrote:
> 
> > Shane Hathaway wrote:
> > > 
> > > If prefixes map directly to components or interfaces, the new syntax is 
> > > really specific to Zope.  Every time you want to create a new API, you 
> > > have to be sure no one else has staked a claim to the prefix you want. 
> > > Even if you're using page templates outside Zope, you have to be sure no 
> > > one in the Zope community has taken your prefix, because you might want 
> > > to interoperate with Zope someday, and you don't want to change your 
> > > prefix.  So effectively, all the namespaces are centralized and 
> > > controlled by Zope.  That could be a problem for interesting prefixes 
> > > with ambiguous meanings like "workflow", "versions", "api", "db", etc.
> > 
> > This is an amazingly good point and a very good reason to go for
> > namespaces IMNSHO... Could they be made easier to swallow by allowing
> > 'default' namespace-to-prefix mappings being made outside the template
> > or would this leave us back at this problem?
> 
> Default prefixes are good for two cases that I can think of: common
> minimal presentation operations that are currently difficult to write but
> shouldn't be (and shouldn't require any Python), and access to core Zope
> APIs (to make writing templates easy in Zope).  There's no conflict in
> those cases and the default prefixes would be a service to all template
> authors.

Maybe I'm just being dense, but can't we solve the "default namespaces"
issue by defining the defaults in the 'main_template', in which *every*
"normal" Zope page template will wrap itself?  Then people who want to
re-bind the defaults, or add new ones, will just customize that template
(or the macro which defines the namespaces :).

Tres.
-- 
===============================================================
Tres Seaver                                tseaver@zope.com
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