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Graham Dumpleton
grahamd at dscpl.com.au
Sat Sep 2 19:45:17 EDT 2006
On 03/09/2006, at 9:22 AM, Blair P. Houghton wrote: > Graham Dumpleton <grahamd at dscpl.com.au> >> All I can say is that we know the documentation is inadequate. > > Which I think is a shame. Python is an excellent language. > mod_python is an obvious way to leverage that. It should end > up killing the other server-side systems. But if the documentation > sets the user up for frustrations, it will never happen. More of a frustration at this point has been the large number of little problems with mod_python and lack of API for more useful features of Apache. Have a look through: http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MODPYTHON and you will see we have fixing and improving mod_python in more than trivial ways for mod_python 3.3. This is where most of our energy has been getting concentrated. There is not much point having beautiful documentation if the software itself has so many problems or can't be made to do what is needed anyway. I too would like to see a decent framework like Django/Turbogears but built direct on the foundations of Apache and mod_python and using the features of Apache rather than just using it as a mere hopping off point. It really just doesn't make sense to be ignoring all the stuff that Apache provides in the way of access control, user authentication etc etc. We just have a bit of work to do before this is going to be seen as viable. >> We have been waiting for a long time for the ASF to setup a >> [mod_python doc] wiki > > At whom would I throw my urging for this? There is already a request in the ASF issue tracking system for it. The people who handle these requests though generally have a lot of other stuff to do as well, so it takes a while. There are some people higher up in the ASF who monitor this list, so maybe they will see this discussion, be kind to us, and see if they can get it moving more quickly. :-) >> Anyway, for myself I have given up waiting for the wiki and am >> turning my existing mod_python articles into my own unofficial >> wiki so I can at least more quickly add new stuff. > > Good idea. Got a URL? I'd be glad to help. You could make > a tree of unconverted mod_python doc and we could convert them > as we touch them. Though given the fairly simple nature of > the document, it might not be hard to make a LaTeX-to-wiki > converter for it. Wasn't someone just asking about parsers? Although I would like to see the LaTeX documentation done away with and replaced with wiki based documentation, it wasn't my intent to be doing that on my own wiki. My wiki was going to be a personal wiki for my own stuff on mod_python and wasn't going to be writable to anyone at this point in case I may want to use the collection of stuff I create for something else later. >> In respect of AddHandler, SetHandler, MultiViews etc, you need to >> realise >> that mod_python is an extension for Apache. Thus, such things like >> this >> aren't actually implemented by mod_python but are implemented >> by Apache. To use mod_python properly, you also need to understand >> Apache to some degree and that means also referring to the Apache >> documentation. > > Things I'm sure I'd have eventually had to explore as my needs went > deeper, but at the "get me up and running" phase, I want nothing to > do with server internals or the million configurable items that I > could be tweaking. The shorter and straighter the time from the > download button to the display of "hello, world!" on the browser > screen, the better mod_python will sell. And you can get it working without needing them, as long as you use .py in the URL all the time. I only point it out as too often people using SetHandler see it working without .py and think that translates to AddHandler when it doesn't without the extra magic stuff I mentioned. Graham
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