Zope style (was: tuning our site

[Evan Simpson]

Cameron Laird wrote:
> There are a couple of pertinent facts.  First, much of the
> passion "Web designers" are supposed to have for "templates"
> comes from the supposition that they want stuff to look like 
> HTML, so they can use their "HTML editors".  Is *anyone* doing
> that with Zope, though?  It would surprise me.

Be surprised :-)  This was a major motivator behind the design of Zope 
Page Templates (ZPTs).  Unlike DTML, ZPT makes it fairly easy to create 
a template from a Web designer's mockup that the designer can continue 
to maintain, with a small amount of care and training.  ZPTs don't 
replace all of DTML's uses in Zope (e.g. SQL generation), but they are 
now the preferred tool for XML/HTML.

 > Interesting!  I want to be clear on the work-flow; you'd edit
 > and preview in HomeSite, then switch back to the Zope manage-
 > ment screens, and use the "Upload File" selection to update
 > the site itself--do I have that right?  Have I just demon-
 > strated my ignorance of some far slicker interface?

Yep:  The exquisitely excellent External Editor, by caseman.  It puts a 
pencil icon next to most Zope objects in a Folder listing.  When clicked 
on, this icon interacts with a local Python helper script (associated in 
your browser via mime-type) to open the object in the editor of your 
choice.  It WebDAV-locks the object, then unlocks it when the editor 
releases the file.  It sends changes to Zope whenever it detects that 
the editor has modified the file.

Between them, ZPTs and External Editor have made me several times more 
productive, and an order of magnitude happier to use Zope.

Cheers,

Evan @ 4-am