Jason Leach pointed out that Document Template could include ASP/PHP style Python escapes to embed code. This may seem a good idea at first but part of the really nice thing about Zope is that it goes a fair way to ensure you organise your work cleanly and seperate logic from the layout. In PHP I always use FastTemplate which offers pretty much only what <dtml-var VARIABLE_NAME> does (that doesn't include <dtml-var "VAR1+VAR2"> or anything "clever"). The benefit of having no logic in your HTML is huge when you have multiple people working on the project. The "creep" of template systems to hold more and more logic such as Loops, Conditions etc is forgivable as it allows basic programming to be done by the HTML people but strictly it isn't necessary as long a variable insertion / tag replacement is possible. If you are "having to [use] all those dtml tags" then you're probably at the point where replacing that big chunk with <dtml-var welcomeMessage> is in order. This could be anything you want (Python method, External Method, DTML method etc) which does the real logic and conditionally returns its output to the master template (that content possibly from another smaller, reused DTML method - it amazing how many sites use the same text all over it (like Next 10, Prev 10 for example!). At that point you've removed any fear of the HTML people walking over your code with a bulldozer and it means they can update things while you do. What I'm suggesting is that <%, <?php and <%py are Bad Things. If you want them, use ASP with Python hosted inside or PHP. Much of the benefit of Zope is that it keeps things elegant. The overhead of splitting things up so much is small when you start to reuse the bits (by my milage this is on regular occasion). Even the <dtml-if>, <dtml-in> and <dtml-let> tags could be argued to be Bad Things but they are convenient in some cases (they are easy for HTML writers to understand and can be used for simple things by them). I don't really see the "convenience" of a Python code escape as its just as easy to make a Python Method and pop <dtml-var MyPythonMethod> in its place keeping things neat. Still, I suppose it'd hardly matter if it was available, those who agree with the above would probably ignore it, much as I ignore it in PHP and use FastTemplate instead. Phill _______________________________________________ Zope maillist - [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope ** No cross posts or HTML encoding! ** (Related lists - http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-announce http://lists.zope.org/mailman/listinfo/zope-dev )