Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to A Template-Based ACS

Collapse
Posted by Titus Brown on
Don -- yes, "unfolding" an object hierarchy into a page sounds like it could get nasty. I'll have to take a look at Zope; I don't want anything complicated to use, and it doesn't seem (intuitively) that you'd have to *make* it complicated. Q: Are there any templating systems out there that people *like* and have used?

Ben -- Tcl is great: it works well for its current purpose, and it's extraordinarily easy to embed. I agree that requiring another language is a bad idea -- but I think that "OO Tcl" would end up being very much like C++, a hodgepodged mishmash of ugly code that only recently (after how many years?) has compilers that fully support it ;).

But if Python allows embedded Tcl (which it does, with very little effort) then there is a good reason to build an OO framework in it and have Tcl code working within that framework, instead of trying to build the framework with a tool that's ill suited to it (Tcl) or with an extension to that tool ([incr Tcl]) that's grafted on. Moreover, a well designed templating system shouldn't require anything but very serious infrastructure-style hacking -- and people interested in doing such usually don't mind learning new languages.

As an end to these language wars: I'm working on a few projects with PyWX, and I'll post my results here when I'm solidly on my way. It may be that working with Python isn't a great boon and merely complicates matters (which, in some cases, it does); whether or not these things can be overcome is a matter for the developers of PyWX. It's "our job" to bring it to you, not your job to come to us ;). But if you're going to argue that Turing completeness is enough for a language to possess, let's talk APL, PL/SQL, Fortran, x86 assembly language...

Cheers, --titus