Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What are Page Templates (ZPT)?
See Project Vision for an overview.
Q2: Will ZPT replace DTML?
ZPT is an alternative to DTML and may replace most if not all of its usage for a particular audience. If you are a PresentationDesigner, you may find ZPT more useful than DTML.
Q3: Is DTML being deprecated?
No, we encourage new projects (and developers) to take a look at ZPT and see if it fits. At DC, we will probably use ZPT as much as possible on new projects. However, if DTML is a better fit…
Q4: Can I use ZPT without knowing XML?
Yes, you can use it without knowing anything about XML. ZPT’s AttributeLanguage was designed for compatibility with XML markup syntax, but this mostly means that it is simple and very well-defined.
Q4a: So, Why XML?
As the Web moves to XHTML, XML will be the common underlying markup format. There is enough flexibility through the usage of namespaces, that we can work within the structure of XML to do the DTMLish things we wish to do. Also, we expect more HTML editors, in the future, to support XML than DTML ;-)
Q4b: Okay, but why be restricted to working within attributes?
Defining our own elements was certainly a possibility. Unfortunately, we expect that most HTML editors will continue to want to deal with HTML, not arbitrary XML. Defining your own element set (through a DTD or Schema) requires a lot of processing overhead on the editor side in order to do anything useful with that markup. Part of the core idea of ZPT is to allow [PresentationDesigner]s to concentrate on the presentation (the HTML) rather than some newly defined elements that don’t visually render themselves in the editor.
Q5: Does ZPT require XHTML?
ZPT will work within plain old HTML. The ZPT markup exists in attributes of your HTML tags, so if your HTML editor leaves unfamiliar attributes alone, it should work with ZPT templates.
Q6: What is XHTML (briefly, please)?
Loosely speaking, XHTML is HTML with stricter syntax and semantics. As a rule, all tags must have end tags. And, all attributes must follow a syntax of ‘attributename = “something always in quotes”’. Also, certain elements cannot contain other elements as children. Thats pretty much it (with apologies to XML language lawyers).
Q7: My favorite editor produces plain old HTML. Can I use ZPT?

Yes, you have a couple of choices. The best is to use an editor that supports XML (meaning: it doesn’t muck with your elements or use of namespaced attributes). If your editor doesn’t mess with stuff like this:

<span tal:define="x str:1" />

Then you can probably use ZPT.

However, you can also use a tool like HTML Tidy to convert your HTML to XHTML (which ZPT naturally speaks). The side effect of this is that your output doesn’t match your original source! This is not an optimal solution.

Q8: What HTML editors work well with ZPT?
We are still compiling a list, but on the commercial (industrial strength) front, GoLive and Dreamweaver 4 work well with ZPT. Recent versions of Amaya work well in HTML mode.
Q9: Ideally, how does one use an HTML editor with ZPT?
ZPT wants to be fairly tightly integrated with your editing process. Right now, this means using the ZPT HTML edit form (yuck) or using a HTML editor that works with FTP or WebDAV. Since ZPT expects you to retrieve your editable sources from Zope, this is the most natural way to work: Zope has the canonical sources for the site.
Q10: Why does ZPT talk about TAL and METAL being non-Zope specific?
We thought that these ideas were so cool, that we shouldn’t hog them all to ourselves. We, of course, expect to have the most butt kicking implementation of the specs, but we wanted to make sure we had a general enough specification so that people who steal the idea (and all good ideas should be stolen!), will not produce widely different implementations. We need convergence, not divergence!
Q11: Does this mean that they will be proposed as standards to a body such as the W3C?
Currently, we have no plans to propose TAL and METAL as a standard. As a practical specification, TAL and METAL need to be able to evolve as needed for applications using template systems based on TAL and METAL, and there’s no need to wait for outside standards bodies to approve new versions of the specifications.
Q12: How do I run the tests? Should they all pass?
The TAL README.txt file describes how to run the test suite for TAL. If you do not have Expat installed, the XML tests will not pass. (All recent versions of Python include Expat as a matter of course.) The ZPT tests can be run by executing run.py from the tests directory.
Q13: Does acquisition work with these path expressions in TALES?
Path expressions such as here/master_page/macros/copyright must always start with a builtin or defined variable (“here”, in this case). Each step in the path will take advantage of acquisition if the current object supports it, so “master_page” may be acquired from “here”. This is different from DTML, where every name is searched for in a large, diverse set of locations many of which support acquisition. locations

Q14: How do I write comments that won’t be included in the rendered page?

Use ‘tal:replace=”nothing”’ or ‘tal:condition=”nothing”’, like this:

<span tal:replace="nothing">A Comment</span>
<span tal:replace="nothing"><-- A Commented Comment --></span>

Q15: When I use tal:attributes to set the ‘src’ or ‘href’ attribute of a tag, it turns my ampersands into &amp;amp;s! How can I stop it?

You can’t, and shouldn’t. According to the standard, escaping is the proper thing to do here. It works properly with every browser we’ve tried.

Comments

flight (May 15, 2001 7:52 am; Comment #7) Editor Remark Requested

Regarding Q8/Q9 (HTML editors with ZPT): Somebody should fill in some tips how to use (X)Emacs with PageTemplates.

How do I set up a PageTemplate to startup the correct Emacs mode ? Which Emacs modes are preferable for editing PageTemplates (elaborate on psgml, html-mode, hm–html-mode, xml-mode etc.pp.) ? Is it possible to augment the mode’s definitions with TAL, METAL and perhaps TALES descriptions ?

Anonymous User (Jun 11, 2001 4:53 am; Comment #8) Editor Remark Requested
In my view, a good FAQ should provide links to the current specifications.
Anonymous User (Jan 7, 2002 9:40 pm; Comment #10) –

I’ve been using HTML_Kit from http://www.chami.org, its shareware, Windows only. Has FTP built-in and Tidy.

Would be handy if ZPT’s would return a long FTP response code with the error message if there’s a problem in the template during a STOR.

Anonymous User (Mar 20, 2002 8:58 pm; Comment #11) Editor Remark Requested
A comment on Q15: while I agree that ampersands etc. should be quoted, there is a slight problem when one tries to place quoted characters themselves in a ‘src’ or ‘href’ attribute. For example, while &amp; is handled correctly, the equally valid &#38; is not, and gets turned into &amp;#38; and won’t be properly recognized by any browser. The code should probably ignore ampersands that are already part of escape sequences.