On Jan 22, 2008, at 3:46 PM, Mike Orr wrote:
> > I'm working on a basic Routes implementation according to the spec on > the wiki. Ben is helping with the unit tests and some of the coding. > I hope to get a partial-feature release by early February. > > WebHelpers is waiting till I make some headway on Routes. Ben is > going to add JQuery and YUI support, including using them together. A > couple people volunteered to help with those libraries; you can > coordinate with Ben. We'll also need documentation and HOWTOs on > using these libraries in Pylons, including examples of their features. > That's not completely dependent on WebHelpers and can be started now. > > I'm still undecided about WebHelpers' HTML building: ElementTree, > lxml, or something else. I think we'll just try both of those and see > which works better. > > Advantages of ElementTree: > - No installation hassles. > > Advantages of lxml: > - It's becoming common in other Python projects, potentially emerging > as a standard. > - Ian Bicking recommends it: > http://blog.ianbicking.org/lxml-transformations.html. > - HTML output, which is more compatible with the current generation of > browsers than XHTML. > (Injecting XHTML into HTML documents is undesirable, though we may > be able to get away with it > until the tools improve.) > - Support for quirky HTML input. (Not needed now but maybe in the > future.) > > Installing lxml: > - Debian/Ubuntu require the libxml2-dev and libxslt-dev packages. > - Precompiled Windows eggs are on PyPI for the non-latest development > versions. These may > require downloading and installing manually to prevent easy_install > from trying to compile from source. > The drawbacks don't sound like too much on paper, but installing C lib dependencies is a big pain, especially for new users. I recall one of the most common issues from new users a year ago was about how to install Pylons, because setuptools/distutils got an error during the installation of Cheetah's C libs. libxml2 is a bit different in the Cheetah C libs that distutils doesn't compile it. I'd argue the need to resort to your package management system to install it is an even worse situation, though. Granted a lot of folks have go to the package manger at some point to install a database library (the QuickWiki even avoids this by advocating sqlite, which ships with 2.5), but I really want to avoid requiring new folks to have to jump through hoops just to get the Pylons basics installed. IIRC Ian was really happy with libxml2 for very fast, almost xslt-ish HTML translations in his Deliverance project. WebHelpers is just making small HTML snippets though -- even if it has a nicer API than the alternatives, with the added C lib doesn't it become overkill? Also, I'm working on getting Pylons running on Jython, where C lib dependencies become just another big roadblock. Jim Baker has also started looking into getting TG2 working on there. The fact that ToscaWidgets wants to move away from RuleDispatch and decoratortools is a really good thing. -- Philip Jenvey --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pylons-devel" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/pylons-devel?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
