Zope/DTML Infuriating...

[Jens]

On Apr 29, 3:16 pm, Christian Heimes <li... at cheimes.de> wrote:
> Jens schrieb:
>
> > Hello Everyone.
>
> > I am relatively new to Zope(using it for a work project) and I was
> > wondering if someone here could help me out or at least refer me to a
> > decent documentationg for Zope/DTML/Python (at the detail level of
> > php.net or Java API reference).  http://www.zope.org/Documentation/Books/ZopeBook/2_6Edition/
> > isn't really detailed enough for my taste. if it doesn't contain a
> > exhautive description of all available base classes it's simply no
> > good as a reference resource.
>
> Are you forced to use DTML for the job? ZPT are far superior and easier
> to work with, if you have to output HTML.
>
> Christian

For now, I have to use DTML as I am building on an existing solution.
I might look into ZPT's but I have limited time and theres no to time
at this point to redo everything as ZPT. In the long run we're
probably
going in a completely different direction, but that a another story.

I like some aspects of zope but I find that it ends up sitting between
two chairs. On one hand it want's to be a templating language which is
easy to get into for novices, but on the other hand you really have be
familiar with python to be able to so stuff thats only slighty more
complicated
then standard SSI. And don't get me started on the whole security
philosophy.

@Marco:
Thanks for the links :-) Python may be one of those really elegant
languages, but the reference is really sub standard. Checkout the
layout
of php.net for comparison. Think what you will about php, but the
reference
is excellent. For that matter check out msdn section on old-school
asp, or
even the common-lisp documentation(http://www.lispworks.com/
documentation/HyperSpec/Front/Contents.htm)
It's  accessibility like that i'm missing. It shouldn't take 10 min
and a usenet
post to figure to how to basic stuff like string concatenation. And
theres
still plenty of unanswered questions after checking the reference:

- What is the exact definition of the operator e.g. op + (<string>,
<string>) -> <string>, op + (<int>, <int>) : <int>, op + (<float> ...
- What is the exact operator precedence
- Why is it, when primitive data types seem to be objects (similar to
javascript), that type casting is done through build-in functions
rather than methods, e.g. String.toInt('5') or '5'.toInt() or x =
Integer.fromString('5').