[Web-SIG] WSGI configuration and character encoding.

[Ian Bicking]

Phillip J. Eby wrote:
> At 06:57 PM 11/30/04 -0800, Bill Janssen wrote:
> 
>> I think you're either dreaming, or have a much different idea of
>> "non-technical user" than I have.
> 
> 
> Well, by definition in this context, they need to be somebody who can 
> edit a simple configuration file.  If not, then it doesn't matter how 
> simple a configuration file we make it!  (Also, presumably they're not 
> going to be able to configure their web server, either.)  The point is 
> to require as few skills as possible beyond "can edit a configuration 
> file".  :)

FWIW, a lot of PHP applications these days use through-the-web 
configuration; dump the files somewhere web-accessible, make sure at 
least a few select files are writable by Apache, and the rest has a GUI 
(of sorts).  Even I find this quite convenient.  Though I just 
encountered an application that took this too far, and stored preference 
information in the database, including the database connection 
information.  It confused me greatly when the two weren't in sync, and 
it tried to reconnect to a database that no longer existed after I moved 
the application to another server.  But I digress.

We aren't where (mindful) PHP is (or even close), but it's something to 
shoot for.  This may not actually apply to deployment configuration 
files, except that it would be nice if cooperative software could be 
packaged with a deployment configuration file that didn't need editing. 
  At which point it might as well be a Python script that sets up the 
necessary objects.  Python can be much smarter about this than any 
configuration file.

Which is why I don't really think deployment configuration is all that 
important.  It doesn't hurt, but I don't think it should hold up the PEP 
in any way -- I think the PEP is entirely sufficient as it is, and we 
can figure out deployment or async or whatever in other PEPs, or in a 
later revision to WSGI.

-- 
Ian Bicking  /  ianb at colorstudy.com  / http://blog.ianbicking.org