Mailing List Archive

On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 09:22:05PM +0200, Thomas Ackermann wrote:
> From: Thomas Ackermann <tgm@math.uni-bonn.de>
> Subject: htmllib, cgi, HTMLfmt, genCGI, HTMLgen, html, Zope, ...
> Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 21:22:05 +0200
> To: python-list@python.org
>
> Hi!
>
> I have not much time to experiment with those modules and would like
> to hear opinions about to use what module ;-)
>

Well,
I used HTMLgen and I don't really understand why to use it. If you don't
know HTML, you can't use it: you need to understand tags like <B>, <I>, <U>
and such. I strongly recommend to have a look at HTML: if you look at it only
one hour, you'll already understand the basics. Another hour and you understand
frames and tables, and another hour to understand how it interacts with CGI.
So you'll only need 3 hours, if not less, to learn web programming. When you're
able to do that, you'll understand much more about HTMLgen (but won't need it,
I think...)

> Also, i am not exactly sure what Zope is - it seems to be something to
> create WWW-Pages and allow access to databases and it has it's own
> WebServer (a variant of Medusa) ...
>

Me neither.

> So, what to use to allow for an Internet-Shop with pages created from
> databases and allowing customers to purchase over net?
>

If you're doing such serious things, you should

**really**

learn web programming!!

> Can do Zope such things? Is it overkill at first? What can it do
> beyond? (And yes, i read some documentation, but i do not even
> understand what an "Application Server" is ;-)
>

Zope seems to be quite powerful.

> GNU LINUX Python gtk pygtk MySQL FUDGE GURPS

GNU LINUX Python Civ III discoverb X much more.

regards,
Gerrit.

--
The Dutch Linuxgames homepage: http://linuxgames.nl.linux.org
Personal homepage: http://www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/

Discoverb is a python program (in several languages) which tests the words you
learned by asking it. Homepage: http://www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/discoverb/
Oh my god! They killed init! You bastards!

On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 09:22:05PM +0200, Thomas Ackermann wrote:
> From: Thomas Ackermann <tgm@math.uni-bonn.de>
> Subject: htmllib, cgi, HTMLfmt, genCGI, HTMLgen, html, Zope, ...
> Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 21:22:05 +0200
> To: python-list@python.org
>
> Hi!
>
> I have not much time to experiment with those modules and would like
> to hear opinions about to use what module ;-)
>

Well,
I used HTMLgen and I don't really understand why to use it. If you don't
know HTML, you can't use it: you need to understand tags like <B>, <I>, <U>
and such. I strongly recommend to have a look at HTML: if you look at it only
one hour, you'll already understand the basics. Another hour and you understand
frames and tables, and another hour to understand how it interacts with CGI.
So you'll only need 3 hours, if not less, to learn web programming. When you're
able to do that, you'll understand much more about HTMLgen (but won't need it,
I think...)

> Also, i am not exactly sure what Zope is - it seems to be something to
> create WWW-Pages and allow access to databases and it has it's own
> WebServer (a variant of Medusa) ...
>

Me neither.

> So, what to use to allow for an Internet-Shop with pages created from
> databases and allowing customers to purchase over net?
>

If you're doing such serious things, you should

**really**

learn web programming!!

> Can do Zope such things? Is it overkill at first? What can it do
> beyond? (And yes, i read some documentation, but i do not even
> understand what an "Application Server" is ;-)
>

Zope seems to be quite powerful.

> GNU LINUX Python gtk pygtk MySQL FUDGE GURPS

GNU LINUX Python Civ III discoverb X much more.

regards,
Gerrit.

--
The Dutch Linuxgames homepage: http://linuxgames.nl.linux.org
Personal homepage: http://www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/

Discoverb is a python program (in several languages) which tests the words you
learned by asking it. Homepage: http://www.nl.linux.org/~gerrit/discoverb/
Oh my god! They killed init! You bastards!

On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 10:38:57PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 09:22:05PM +0200, Thomas Ackermann wrote:
> > I have not much time to experiment with those modules and would like
> > to hear opinions about to use what module ;-)
>
> Well,
> I used HTMLgen and I don't really understand why to use it. If you don't
> know HTML, you can't use it: you need to understand tags like <B>, <I>, <U>
> and such. I strongly recommend to have a look at HTML: if you look at it only
> one hour, you'll already understand the basics. Another hour and you understand
> frames and tables, and another hour to understand how it interacts with CGI.
> So you'll only need 3 hours, if not less, to learn web programming. When you're
> able to do that, you'll understand much more about HTMLgen (but won't need it,
> I think...)

Thanx - But i know HTML (and Java) itself already ;-)
What i do not know are the Python modules for it and wanted to get some
information from people who used several of the alternatives already.
But thanx anyway ...


> > So, what to use to allow for an Internet-Shop with pages created from
> > databases and allowing customers to purchase over net?
> >
>
> If you're doing such serious things, you should
>
> **really**
>
> learn web programming!!

Again, i want to use Python and a decent HTML/CGI module, i never said to
be completely unexperienced with WWW stuff ...

Byebye,
--
Thomas Ackermann | Tel. +49-(0)228/631369|73-7773 | <tgm@math.uni-bonn.de>
finger tgm@rhein.math.uni-bonn.de for public key
GNU LINUX Python gtk pygtk MySQL FUDGE GURPS

On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 10:38:57PM +0200, Gerrit Holl wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 08, 1999 at 09:22:05PM +0200, Thomas Ackermann wrote:
> > I have not much time to experiment with those modules and would like
> > to hear opinions about to use what module ;-)
>
> Well,
> I used HTMLgen and I don't really understand why to use it. If you don't
> know HTML, you can't use it: you need to understand tags like <B>, <I>, <U>
> and such. I strongly recommend to have a look at HTML: if you look at it only
> one hour, you'll already understand the basics. Another hour and you understand
> frames and tables, and another hour to understand how it interacts with CGI.
> So you'll only need 3 hours, if not less, to learn web programming. When you're
> able to do that, you'll understand much more about HTMLgen (but won't need it,
> I think...)

Thanx - But i know HTML (and Java) itself already ;-)
What i do not know are the Python modules for it and wanted to get some
information from people who used several of the alternatives already.
But thanx anyway ...


> > So, what to use to allow for an Internet-Shop with pages created from
> > databases and allowing customers to purchase over net?
> >
>
> If you're doing such serious things, you should
>
> **really**
>
> learn web programming!!

Again, i want to use Python and a decent HTML/CGI module, i never said to
be completely unexperienced with WWW stuff ...

Byebye,
--
Thomas Ackermann | Tel. +49-(0)228/631369|73-7773 | <tgm@math.uni-bonn.de>
finger tgm@rhein.math.uni-bonn.de for public key
GNU LINUX Python gtk pygtk MySQL FUDGE GURPS

Gerrit Holl wrote:

> I used HTMLgen and I don't really understand why to use it. If you don't
> know HTML, you can't use it: you need to understand tags like <B>, <I>, <U>
> and such. I strongly recommend to have a look at HTML:

If you know HTML, then you can use HTMLgen to help you maintain a
consistent appearance from page to page on a web site. In particular,
many users find a consistent use of navigation aides (such as next page,
previous page, and home) to be very helpful. It is also useful for
helping multiple people working together to produce pages with a
consistent appearance by using the same document base classes.
It also provides a nice abstraction for programatically generated
documents (for example, from CGI). That way, you don't have to
output raw HTML with print statements from your program. Again, if
several CGI scripts should produce pages with a similar appearance,
you can factor out the common parts into a class. Then each program
only needs to instantiate the class and fill in the extra information.

For a site of a dozen pages, HTMLgen is definitely unnecessary.
For a site of millions of pages, I think that HTMLgen would prove
insufficient. For a site of a few hundred pages, I would probably
consider HTMLGen, especially if python scripts will be generating
those pages (either as CGI scripts or as a cron job).

As a bonus, it seems that it would be simple to use the HTMLgen
document classes to generate multiple formats. I have been thinking
about writing output methods for LaTeX output. :)

-------------------------------------------
Tom Bryan
Applied Research Laboratories
University of Texas at Austin

Gerrit Holl wrote:

> I used HTMLgen and I don't really understand why to use it. If you don't
> know HTML, you can't use it: you need to understand tags like <B>, <I>, <U>
> and such. I strongly recommend to have a look at HTML:

If you know HTML, then you can use HTMLgen to help you maintain a
consistent appearance from page to page on a web site. In particular,
many users find a consistent use of navigation aides (such as next page,
previous page, and home) to be very helpful. It is also useful for
helping multiple people working together to produce pages with a
consistent appearance by using the same document base classes.
It also provides a nice abstraction for programatically generated
documents (for example, from CGI). That way, you don't have to
output raw HTML with print statements from your program. Again, if
several CGI scripts should produce pages with a similar appearance,
you can factor out the common parts into a class. Then each program
only needs to instantiate the class and fill in the extra information.

For a site of a dozen pages, HTMLgen is definitely unnecessary.
For a site of millions of pages, I think that HTMLgen would prove
insufficient. For a site of a few hundred pages, I would probably
consider HTMLGen, especially if python scripts will be generating
those pages (either as CGI scripts or as a cron job).

As a bonus, it seems that it would be simple to use the HTMLgen
document classes to generate multiple formats. I have been thinking
about writing output methods for LaTeX output. :)

-------------------------------------------
Tom Bryan
Applied Research Laboratories
University of Texas at Austin

On Fri, Jul 09, 1999 at 12:48:00PM +0000, Thomas Ackermann wrote:
<more>...</more>
> Thanx - But i know HTML (and Java) itself already ;-)
> What i do not know are the Python modules for it and wanted to get
> some information from people who used several of the alternatives
> already. But thanx anyway ...

I downloaded HTMLgen and Zope (and few other packages from
www.python.org), read all their documentations, and installed them.
But, I just couldn't figure out how to use them for my need. And, no,
I'm not a newbie.

Some time ago, I wanted to generate HTML output with LaTeX-like
structures (ie. numbered sections, math expressions as transparent GIF
images, references, footnotes). So, I wrote 'HTMLtag' and uploaded to
'ftp.python.org'. It's not converter like 'html2latex'. It only spit
out HTML <tag>...</tag> format, as opposed to manually editing .html
file or using lots of 'print' in .py file.

>
>
> > > So, what to use to allow for an Internet-Shop with pages created from
> > > databases and allowing customers to purchase over net?
> > >
> >
> > If you're doing such serious things, you should
> >
> > **really**
> >
> > learn web programming!!
>
> Again, i want to use Python and a decent HTML/CGI module, i never said to
> be completely unexperienced with WWW stuff ...

As long as your ISP has Python and mSQL, mySQL, ..., it should be
straight-forward. There are modules in the python distribution for
parsing HTML and CGI input. For producing HTML output, it's sort of
up to you, as long as you know HTML.

William Park

I am in the exact same situation as you are. I am a web programmer and I'm
trying to implement the CGI and database stuff with Python. I am using the
HTMLFMT module from the INTERNET PROGRAMMING book and the cgi module from the
standard library. What the HTMLFMT library does for you is just that you don't
have to type in all the tags, basically it's nothing magical, if I didn't have
it I would have to make something up and it probably wouldn't be half as good.
the standard cgi unit gives you all the fields from the form, and I haven't
looked at the cgi modules from the book yet to see if they give me any added
benefit. The big problem I came across was my web host, and all of the other
ones I talked to, refused to install the mysql interface to Python, and it has
to be included in the build (or something like that) So I just installed gadfly,
which seems to be working great for me right now. I'm still playing with it not
in production yet.
I have no idea what ZOPE does, but everyone who talks about it seems to love it.

Hope this helps

Sim Zacks

Thomas Ackermann wrote:

> Hi!
>
> I need to generate some hompages and cgi-script for database access,
> forms and such and want to do it in Python, of course. As it is i have
> no experience with it's WWW-related stuff ...
>
> There are htmllib and cgi from the library, HTMLfmt and genCGI from
> the "Internet Programming with Python" book, HTMLgen itself and
> something just announced called "html", which seems to be a variant of
> HTMLgen(?!)
>
> I have not much time to experiment with those modules and would like
> to hear opinions about to use what module ;-)
>
> Also, i am not exactly sure what Zope is - it seems to be something to
> create WWW-Pages and allow access to databases and it has it's own
> WebServer (a variant of Medusa) ...
>
> So, what to use to allow for an Internet-Shop with pages created from
> databases and allowing customers to purchase over net?
>
> Can do Zope such things? Is it overkill at first? What can it do
> beyond? (And yes, i read some documentation, but i do not even
> understand what an "Application Server" is ;-)
>
> Thanx in advance and
> Byebye,
> --
> Thomas Ackermann | Tel. +49-(0)228/631369|73-7773 | <tgm@math.uni-bonn.de>
> finger tgm@rhein.math.uni-bonn.de for public key
> GNU LINUX Python gtk pygtk MySQL FUDGE GURPS