Using python on the web

[Martijn Faassen]

spenrose at my-deja.com wrote:
> We build medium-busy, CGI-intensive sites in Python. We were briefly
> quite excited about Zope, but once we realized it locked us into Yet
> Another Programming Language, we lost interest. DHTML is particularly
> problematic, AFAI can tell, because it doesn't appear to allow the
> segregation of HTML development from coding the way Python string
> substitution does. We hire very skilled HTML people to do HTML and tell
> them to leave our sustitution tags alone, rather than taking the time
> and money to create novice DHTML people to do the same work.

If I understand you right, you seem to be incorrect about Zope. I've worked
together with a HTML designer and he had no trouble with DTML tags.
You can also tell the designer to leave the DTML tags alone, though
usually you just factor out pieces of HTML into fragments, so your
designer isn't even going to see much of DTML beyond the occasional
<dtml-var> tag.

> If we were
> going to learn another language for production purposes, Perl, Java, and
> C++ all have vastly larger infrastructures (code bases, labor pools,
> documentation, etc.) than DHTML ever will.

Note: DTML is named confusingly, and has nothing to do with DHTML. And
I'd just like to see a comparable infrastructure to Zope in Perl or C++.
*Maybe* Java.

DTML should be used as a glue language. Real code should be moved to
Python products. Currently in Zope this is more of a hassle than it needs
to be, but there are already PythonMethods which you can edit through the
web (which you can install seperately). Use minor amounts of DTML only!
(or do away with DTML completely and just use ZPublisher to publish
Python objects)

> There are enough hassles in
> using Python, which I love, because of its relatively small installed
> base. No way am I going to something which is an order of magnitude less
> supported.

That's your choice, of course. I don't think Zope is badly supported,
myself.

Regards,

Martijn
-- 
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No, WWW -- Could we be going in the right direction?