Do I output those variable elements with python with print statements?
Good lord, no! You'd do the same thing you do today with ZPT: Write a
template for each content type.
Each one would be used by an associated bit of Python code, which in a
Zope implementation of Meld2 could be a Script (Python). The script
would take nodes from the main template and insert them into
the content type template, just like you use ZPT macros.
Filling "slots" is easy too.
My reuse example was intended to make this clear.
If you don't want to grab the tarball I just posted it in a comment
here:
http://plope.com/Members/slinkp/meld2_update
I had a look at this now. To be honest, I think it's probably a step back
from the METAL approach to reuse, because, to my mind, at least, the
"template" and "slot" concepts are logically different, but they're marked
up the same way, using meld:id. If you look at the reuse_derived.xhtml
template, there's no way apart from the comments to realise what's dummy
content and what will be integrated into the main page. For the same
reason, I find the python confusing - I have to remember to save tag (the
title), then replace the bulk of my template, then re-insert the saved
tag. This is what I mean by having to learn patterns and not syntax. It
seems to me that this pattern would be so common it should be handled by
the framework, not by my code, at least. But then you'll start inventing
more syntax in the template (probably).
The greater point, though, is that the page designer, in your example,
would still be thinking just as carefully about how these templates
interact as he would using METAL. In that case, having explicit syntax for
it is probably better than letting the joining .py script do that logic
(to avoid one in a dozen of such scripts for different content types
making some silly mistake and compositing it slightly wrong... unless you
start factoring out methods to do some of this replacement, but then you
are simply displacing complexity, and displacing it away from the place
where it logically occurs - in the template compositioning). And if I
think about what that syntax may look like, the METAL syntax is actually
pretty close to an ideal.
That said, this is slighly different from the simpler use case of simply
replacing parts of a page. As a thought experiment, consider a system
where the templates are like Meld2 XHTML pages with meld:id for
placeholders where dynamic content goes, but that also allow the use of
METAL for compositioning. Then again, I'm not quite sure how much that
gains over using tal:replace="@view/something" and doing away with more
the complex parts of TAL. Well, I suppose the complexity of tal:repeat,
tal:condition etc. would be moved away from the template designer.
Martin
--
(muted)
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