Moving to Python from PHP - 3 questions

[Diez B. Roggisch]

> Thank you. My impression of Zope in the past has been that it does what
> I need, along with 10,000 other things I don't (built in WebDAV
> server?!), but clearly I owe it another chance. I've been initially

The apache has a built in webdav server too - is that a reason _not_ to use
it? If you don't want a feature, don't use it. You can turn them off, btw. 

But what you might not be aware of is that zope does not store its
templates, scripts and files in general in the filesystem as php does, but
as objects in the zodb database. So webdav and ftp are other views to that
objects that allow you to load and save these files using "normal" editors
and tools, not only the web-interface of zope. The advantage of this
approach is that versioning of content - regardless of it's type - is
built-in. Can be a life-saver sometimes :)

> attracted to mod_python because of its raw simplicity and its apparent
> similarity to mod_php and mod_perl, which I am familiar with. 

It certainly is the most simple way to create dynamic content. But there is
a big difference between python and php: php started as a web-developers
tool, and it's features are a direct consequence of that. python oth is a
general purpose programming language - it is certainly suited for web
development, but not limited to. There are people who also want to use php
as general purpose programming language - but nevertheless, its design has
been influenced by its main purpose. So you e.g. get session state handling
"for free"  - as more or less _all_ web-apps today need them.


-- 
Regards,

Diez B. Roggisch