Statement Blocks and Conditionals

This is a place where DTML really breaks down IMHO. Not to mention the fact that the rendered HTML code is usually nearly unreadable if you indent the DTML in a readable way. This is a nitpick surely, but a fixable problem. Maybe I'm just anal retentive...

I feel that C and other languages are a good model here. C compliers generally have a preprocessor that scans the code looking for conditionals and defines and deals with them. This basically what Zope is doing, preprocessing the DTML code to spit out HTML code for the browser to render.

So, in keeping with this idea I propose that all block level statements begin with a pound sign (#). Furthermore, they will follow the Python rules of indentation, thus eliminating the need for block end tags such as </dtml-if> and the like. Zope will also strip this block denoting indentation while rendering so that the resulting HTML will look decent. A built in method ^t could be used to insert literal tabs into the HTML output without upsetting the block structure. The use of these would of course be optional.

Example

    #for image in images.objectValues():
        <tr>
        ^t;<td>^image
   

The resulting HTML would look something like this:

<tr>
    <td><IMG SRC="http://server/folder/image1" width="100" height="75">
<tr>
    <td><IMG SRC="http://server/folder/image2" width="100" height="75">
...

Another gripe I have with DTML is that the if statement not only tests for truth, but also for existence (like an ifdef conditional). This can make it's behavior somewhat unintuitive at times at least to me. I say there shall be an if statement and a separate if-exists statement

    #if-exists AUTHENTICATED_USER:
        <H2>Welcome to Foobar Central!</H2>
        <P>^AUTHENTICATED_USER;, your fortune is: ^fortune
    #else
        !raise(type="Forbidden", message="Get Lost!")