[Zope3-dev] attr name space (was: RFC: abolishing python: expressions)

[Alexander Limi]

On Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:49:46 +0100, Philipp von Weitershausen  
<philipp at weitershausen.de> wrote:

> I think it would be quite possible to do explicit key or attribute
> lookup with TALES, e.g.:
>
>   foo/attr:bar  (for foo.bar)
>   foo/key:bar   (for foo['bar'])
>   foo/item:1    (for foo[1])

This reminds me of a thing Steve Alexander and myself talked about when  
working together on a project using Zope 3 a while back:

One of the ugliest and most error-prone parts of TAL is its handling of  
multiple attributes:

<a tal:attributes="href some/url;
                    title some/title;" />

etc.

We looked at having a separate namespace for these kinds of statements.  
The above code would then be:

<a attr:href="some/url"
    attr:title="some/title" />

thus doing away with the need for semicolons and the "should the last line  
have a semicolon or not" confusion.

The same would probably be relevant for tal:defines, something like:

<div define:mammals="here/getMammals"
      define:fish="here/getFish"

  />

This provides the following benefits:

- Easier to parse for XML tools (no semicolons with any meaning)

- More consistent syntax, no need to learn a special way to separate  
several attributes/defines

- It looks nice! :)

What do y'all think?


For the record, I'm also for getting rid of the python: stuff in TAL, but  
only if we can solve the common use cases others have identified earlier  
in this discussion. Making ZPT carry less smarts and preferrably get it a  
bit faster would be very welcome in my universe. :)

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      Alexander Limi · Chief Architect · Plone Solutions · Norway

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