History for DTMLAsRootNode

??changed:
-
Problem:

	99% of all pages start with &lt;dtml-var standard_html_header&gt;
	and end with &lt;dtml-var standard_html_footer&gt;.  
	Couldn't a document start with &lt;dtml&gt; and end with &lt;/dtml&gt;?


There is no explict need for this.  You can achieve this by creating an XML Document which is rendered using the XMLWidgets render subsystem.  Check out this [Zope] pages for more details:

* http://www.zope.org/Members/faassen/XMLWidgets/xmlwidgets-0.6.tgz/info/more_info

* http://www.zope.org/Members/NoneToBe/VisualZope/index_html

Both these products are under development so be warned :)
-- NonetoBe

Besides going XML, it's not hard to place this index_html in your root folder:

&lt;dtml-var standard_html_header&gt;
&lt;dtml-var body_html&gt;
&lt;dtml-var standard_html_footer&gt;

And now thanks to the wonders of acquisition, you can use body_html in your folders instead
of index_html, and you don't need to include any headers or footers anymore. Of course you can always go back to the previous situation if you use index_html somewhere explicitly. And of course another consequence is that each document tends to have its own folder.

Alternatively, you could create a ZClass that automagically includes the header and the
footer.

-- MartijnF

Sure, but this only addresses index_html, not the other documents, or (with a ZClass) doesn't take into account that sometimes you don't *want* a header and a footer.  The proposed syntax is also newbie-friendly.

-- MindLace

And and and!, says *jeffrey-p-shell*, many layouts are more complex than just a "header" and a "footer".  standard_html_header/footer rub me a million times the wrong way.  My own solution to this is the (still unreleased) dtml-component tag, which let DTML be sortof like formatted documents in that you named another DTML Method to render the contents. *It just is really really painful to have a complex layout have to be split into two "files".*

What I have done as a compromise is to create a somewhat more intelligent
 standard_html-header that checks properties to determine what it should do
 or look like. For instance, my header/footer usually insert a navigation bar at the top (My own original idea!&trade; 8^) and a legal disclaimer at the bottom along with the requisite HTML preamble stuff. But, if I don't want the nav bar/disclaimer for a given page, I put a boolean property
 called no_nav_bar in the DTML Document. The header/footer methods detect
 the property and omits the nav bar.

-- [Caseman]

How about something like

standard_html_template::

  <html>
   <head>
    <title><dtml-var title_or_id></title>
   </head>
   <body><dtml-var body></body>
  </html>

some_random_page_html::

  <dtml-template standard_html_template>
   <dtml-part body><p>This is just Some Random Page.</p></dtml-part>
  </dtml-template>

Of course the terminology probably needs some work. --[zigg]