Quixote 0.4.1
=============

Quixote is yet another framework for developing Web applications in
Python.  The design goals were:

  1) To allow easy development of Web applications where the
     accent is more on complicated programming logic than
     complicated templating.

  2) To make the templating language as similar to Python as possible,
     in both syntax and semantics.  The aim is to make as many of the
     skills and structural techniques used in writing regular Python
     code applicable to Web applications built using Quixote.

  3) No magic.  When it's not obvious what to do in
     a certain case, Quixote refuses to guess.

If you view a web site as a program, and web pages as subroutines,
Quixote just might be the tool for you.  If you view a web site as a
graphic design showcase, and each web page as an individual work of art,
Quixote is probably not what you're looking for.

An additional requirement was that the entire system had to be
implementable in a week or two.  The initial version of Quixote was
indeed cranked out in about that time -- thank you, Python!

We've tried to reuse as much existing code as possible:

  * The HTTPRequest and HTTPResponse classes are distantly
    derived from their namesakes in Zope, but we've removed
    huge amounts of Zope-specific code.

  * The quixote.fcgi module is derived from Robin Dunn's FastCGI module,
    available at
      http://alldunn.com/python/#fcgi

Quixote requires Python 2.0 or greater to run.  We only test Quixote
with Python 2.1, but it should still work with 2.0.

For installation instructions, see the doc/INSTALL file.


Overview
========

Quixote works by using a Python package to store all the code and HTML
for a Web-based application.  There's a simple framework for
publishing code and objects on the Web, and the publishing loop can be
customized by subclassing the Publisher class.  You can think of it as
a toolkit to build your own smaller, simpler version of Zope,
specialized for your application.

An application using Quixote is a Python package containing .py and
.ptl files.  

webapp/				# Root of package
	__init__.py			
	module1.py
	module2.py
	pages1.ptl
	pages2.ptl

PTL, Python Template Language, is used to mix HTML with Python code.
More importantly, Python can be used to drive the generation of HTML.
An import hook is defined so that PTL files can be imported just like
Python modules.  The basic syntax of PTL is Python's, with a few small
changes:

template barebones_header(title=None,
                          description=None):
    """
    <html><head>
    <title>%s</title>
    """ % html_quote(str(title))
    if description:
        '<meta name="description" content="%s">' % html_quote(description) 

    '</head><body bgcolor="#ffffff">'

See doc/PTL.txt for a detailed explanation of PTL.


Quick start
===========

For instant gratification, see doc/demo.txt.  This explains how to get
the Quixote demo up and running, so you can play with Quixote without
actually having to write any code.


Documentation
=============

All the documentation is in the doc/ subdirectory.  Recommended reading:

  doc/demo.txt            getting the Quixote demo up and running, and
                          how the demo works
  doc/programming.txt     the components of a Quixote application: how
                          to write your own Quixote apps
  doc/PTL.txt             the Python Template Language, used by Quixote
                          apps to generate web pages
  doc/configuration.txt   how to configure your web server for Quixote


Home page and mailing list
==========================
The Quixote home page is:
        http://www.mems-exchange.org/software/python/quixote/

Discussion of Quixote occurs on the quixote-users mailing list:
        http://www.mems-exchange.org/mailman/listinfo/quixote-users/


-- 
A.M. Kuchling    <akuchlin@mems-exchange.org>
Neil Schemenauer <nascheme@mems-exchange.org>
Greg Ward        <gward@mems-exchange.org>
