[Web-SIG] Shameless self promotion, and serious question.

[Ian Bicking]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> More self-promotion, but what do you think of the WebStack stuff I announced
> on PyPI?

It kind of opens all sorts of questions.  For instance, it's not 
unreasonable that Webware could run under mod_python or Twisted (I think 
a mod_python version existed a long time ago, and I experimented with 
running it under Twisted a while ago as well).  (And Quixote already 
does this in a less experimental fashion)

So, Quixote, or a more developed Webware, or a bunch of other 
frameworks, could each be a kind of compatibility layer of their own. 
Well, they *could*, but I don't think it's that easy.  But why not?  I'm 
not up to figuring out quite why right now -- but I think it has to do 
with fuzzy layers.

It seems natural that a framework could support one of several 
underlying layers (e.g., Apache and Twisted).  But the layers aren't 
very firm (what's "underlying"?).  Can Quixote work under Webware and 
vice versa?  Or something heavier, like Zope?  And what does "work" 
mean, anyway?  Perhaps that a URL space is segmented off, delegated to a 
subframework.  Or by extension, ala Apache?  What about the frameworks 
intermediate work getting to that subspace, like if Zope authenticated a 
person at a higher level in the URL?

I don't know... I don't think it's necessarily *that* hard.  But we have 
to think recursively somewhere in here, instead of layers -- we can only 
build on lower-level layers for a while, at some point peers have to 
work together in a friendly way.  In this case that would mean running 
Webware ontop of WebStack ontop of Twisted, or seemingly silly things 
like that.  But it's not really that silly, because I suspect it would 
be fairly useful.

But I'm not exactly sure how reasonable it is -- maybe it would be 
better to decouple frameworks and separate layers so that this doesn't 
all have to be so vague, and so we can feel more confident in how things 
will work together.

   Ian