[XML-SIG] Hello

[Christopher Petrilli]

Vladimir Marangozov [Vladimir.Marangozov@inrialpes.fr] wrote:
> 
> I wish that the people at DC consider a strategical move for Zope, 
> so that this excellent product incorporates (or is interfaced with)
> the W3C standards. Damn, even the examples in Zope are not in valid HTML!
> DTML is good (it was developped before the current standards), but a shift
> or a bidirectional converter DTML<->XSL/T would be a major win.  Whether
> this is doable is another story. I don't know too much of the details yet,
> but I plan to get at full speed shortly :-)
> 
Without wishing to start a "flame war", I would argue that storing your
data in XML has little if any value... being able to represent it in XML
which needed is much more important.  XML is from my perspective a data
interchange format, one which easily surpases nearly all others.  It's not
a database format, however.  Maybe I've just been scared off by all the
hype.

Anyway, as for Zope (since I'm one of the product manager), DTML was
never inteded to be XML + XSL/T, for a couple reasons:

	o DTML predates XML by year and years
	o XSL/T is a moving target
	o XSL is way too burdensome for most users

As for the last, I put forward that if it takes myself or someone else
I work with HOURS to figure out how to do something that we do in DTML
trivially, then it's not as simple as it should be.  DTML provides things
like tree representation with automatic handling of expansion/closing,
as well as batch management.  It is a REPORTING language, not a transform
language, there is a fundemental difference in the targets.

I personally don't believe there are applicable standards for anything
we're doing, and we follow where we can.  The new syntax of DTML is closer
to being sane, but the full weight of moving to something like a pure
XML syntax or XHTML is too much for our users---with little gain at
this point.  Potentially in the future.  DTML isn't an interchange format
any more than Crystal Reports or PL/SQL is an INTERCHANGE format.  This
is importan to understand when analyzing the problem domain.

Having said that, we're commited to using XML where it's appropriate,
and have some cool stuff that works with DOMs right now.  It will be
driven by customer needs, however, rather than blind adhearance to
standards.

Chris
-- 
| Christopher Petrilli
| petrilli@amber.org