[albatross-users] Re: Albatross-users digest, Vol 1 #176 - 14 msgs

[Dave Cole]

>>>>> "Eric" == Eric S Johansson <esj at harvee.org> writes:

Eric> The documentation looks like it is very good if you have already
Eric> absorbed the gestalt of albatross.  Unfortunately, I've been
Eric> reading the documentation and trying to understand the gestalt
Eric> without much success.  Goodness knows I've written my fair share
Eric> of train-by-telepathy documentation so there is no blame by me
Eric> on that point, just observation.

I am largely responsible for lack of clarity in the documentation.
The criticism above is something I am all too aware of.
train-by-telepathy is a good description :-)

Eric> In any case, this gestalt has driven me to the point of
Eric> admitting failure.  I've surveyed a fair number of template/CGI
Eric> tools and I think albatross is one of the better overall and has
Eric> the best potential for being small and really
Eric> effective. However, I have been unable to learn enough to do I
Eric> need to do and I cannot ask any more from the community.  You
Eric> have been more than generous with your time already and for that
Eric> I am grateful.

It is responses like this that tell us where our weaknesses are.  We
need at more small examples that are carefully explained.  I raised
this with Andrew a week or so ago and asked if he thought we should
remove the popview example.  He said that the popview example was good
because it actually did something real.

Eric> on the documentation front, take a look at CherryPY and pso.
Eric> while I'm not happy with either of them for different reasons,
Eric> they both have good documentation teaching people how to use
Eric> their system.

I will have a look.  Thanks for the tip.

Eric> If you can accept a suggestion, I would suggest creating an very
Eric> simple user-friendly layer.  It would reflect the simple nature
Eric> of CGI environment.  It would consist of a couple of
Eric> functions/methods.  The first would be used for generating
Eric> output.  It would associate a dictionary with an albatross HTML
Eric> template.  The keys of the dictionary would map to variable
Eric> names in the template.  The matching value to a given key would
Eric> be substituted into the variables.  Obviously, nested lists,
Eric> dictionaries etc. would be permitted so that for loops etc. in
Eric> the templates could be used.

Eric> the second function would extract information back from CGI
Eric> forms.  I haven't thought long on the form it would take but I
Eric> suspect it would also be some form of dictionary based structure
Eric> based on an albatross HTML template.

Eric> obviously these ideas aren't fully formed but they are a
Eric> reflection of my confidence that that the whole process can be
Eric> simplified even further than it has been to date.  I also
Eric> believe it should be possible to create a layer over the current
Eric> albatross API to generate this kind of simple interface.

Albatross is supposed to eliminate the need for most of what you
describe above.  Maybe that should be made much clearer in the
documentation (along with some examples showing why).

- Dave

-- 
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