[Twisted-web] twisted.web2+Cheetah+FormKit

[Ed Suominen]

glyph at divmod.com wrote:

>> I feel this time with twisted.web2 things will go well.
>
>
> Since you have complained numerous times of API instability, and you
> complained about Atop even though you were vigorously warned off of
> it, I want to make sure the message is very clear here:
>
>                  twisted.web2 HAS NO STABLE RELEASE YET!!!!!
>
> You may well have to rewrite your application yet again when the code
> changes.  There is also no guarantee that the web2 team won't just
> move to a new module, say, "w3b", and obsolete web2 because they
> discover a radically better abstraction for dealing with HTTP.  The
> whole point of not having a stable release is that they're preserving
> that kind of freedom until they're comfortable enough with the code to
> commit to it.
>
> It continues to baffle me that you have gotten so worked up about API
> stability and version changes, but as a solution to that problem, you
> are now rewriting all your code and moving to a less stable API.

While I'm disappointed to see the strident tone of some postings here
lately, I do share some of Andrea's frustrations with
Nevow/Twisted/Divmod. A couple of years ago I spent a huge amount of
time getting a production web server (http://valuablepatents.com)
running on Nevow because it seemed to be the best way for me, a fairly
capable Python programmer and Twisted devotee, to implement some unique
layout requirements. I also figured I was investing in the foundation of
additional virtual domain sites to come, e.g., a rewrite of my old
standby http://eepatents.com.

Unfortunately,  even after all this time has passed, there still doesn't
seem to be any solid footing for maintaining a Twisted-based web server.
The old twisted.web package seems to be highly disparaged and lingers in
the shadow the of the inevitable Next Big Thing (web2) being worked on
by the Twisted developers, though web2 is itself disavowed for
production use as we've seen in the quoted message above. Nevow seems to
be a somewhat forgotten stepchild off by itself; I would have found it
very difficult to use without some serious help that was generously
supplied on #twisted.web, and things don't seem to have improved lately.

At this point, I will confess that I'm tempted to just "wget -R" the
whole Nevow vhost site and just render the HTML statically from some
other server. I still have plans to do some Python web stuff, but
there's not exactly a shortage of Python frameworks. Indeed, the thought
has occurred to me that both the Nevow code I've written (reST and image
rendering, caching, dynamic config updating & parsing) and Nevow itself
may be destined for culling in the restructuring of the whole overgrown
Web-on-Python herd that will probably begin in earnest at some point
soon. The overabundance and fragmentation of Python web frameworks has
been much criticized and lamented lately, especially in view of how a
certain single package has established clear dominance for a certain
other OOP language.

That said, I continue to be fascinated and impressed by Twisted itself
and have high hopes for it.

Best regards,
Ed Suominen