The minimal Zope 3 code is a page template and a few lines of ZCML in a Python package with an empty __init__.py to hook up a new view to an existing object (say, a folder). There's no Python code *at all*
From my point of view, that's the problem. I don't want to write insome cumbersome and buggy XML format (which is what I'm guessing ZCML is) when I could be writing clean Python code.
Buggy? I don't think ZCML is buggy. Where's that coming from?
For some tasks Python is *not* the ideal language. I've seen the way we glue up components in Zope 2; either stuff is stored in inaccessible ZODB based databases configured through a lot of bad web user interfaces, or you see a lot of grotty Python code which hacks together component configuration. A domain specific language which does this and only this is a massive improvement. Just the ability to *think* about this problem separately helps. We *weren't* writing clean Python code. I've seen this problem occur over and over in Zope 2 projects.
I see this attitude towards domain specific languages all across the python world. People don't like XML document formats either, as they can just use clean, simple, Python datastructures. And lose interoperability, accessibility by a host of programmers that *don't* know your codebase, and code yourself onto an island.
In the mean time, in the world of HTML templating, we see a lot more agreement that sometimes a domain specific language is useful. People generally don't want to be producing all their HTML from Python functions. I've seen far less complaints about ZPT being cumbersome and buggy.
Possibly there are alternatives to a separate domain specific language in Python that are still clean and maintainable. Can you give me an example of a community of Python developers that has been doing this successfully?
That's not say ZCML as it stands doesn't have some didactic/learning curve issues. But to reject this out of hand just like that is a bit too easy, I think.
Regards,
Martijn _______________________________________________ Web-SIG mailing list Web-SIG@python.org Web SIG: http://www.python.org/sigs/web-sig Unsubscribe: http://mail.python.org/mailman/options/web-sig/archive%40mail-archive.com
