Web devel with python. Whats the best route?

[Martijn Faassen]

Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
[snip]
>     Even if the (somewhat richer/more complicated/more flexible and
>     indirect) '3-pronged' approach is used, the presentation language
>     template will still have to be using SOME kinds of markers to
>     signify [a] substitution points for Python-computed values, [b]
>     pieces that need to be repeated and conditions for repetition,
>     [c] conditionally-included pieces (could be framed as a special
>     case of [b] with 0 or 1 'repetitions').  [b] in particular seems
>     to require some sort of minilanguage, and I don't see a need to
>     invent, document, and implement a special-purpose minilanguage
>     for something I can better express directly in Python.

[snip lots more of martellibot text]

Yes, some kind of markers are necessary. In Zope, DTML does that job, 
but since DTML, though it can be nice, has also been called "Perl for
the web" due too far too much magic, various people at Digital
Creations and Hiperlogica are experimenting with another approach to
this, called HiperDOM. Its approach is interesting:

http://www.zope.org/Wikis/DevSite/Projects/HiperDom/PrototypeDocumentation

(though the Zope site seems to be in a major kind of flake-out mode now,
 so this URL may or not work for you :)

The idea is that instead of custom tags, things happen in XHTML attributes,
and each template can be a full web page by itself too, editable by
WYSIWIG tools, as long as those tools leave the extra attributes
intact.

Regards,

Martijn