well, i haven't had much that i can write about, because i've been working. but i recently had some time available to start a project, and i started out with zope (which is what i am developing with at work) and within three days made a decision to abandon zope and use mod_python instead.

conversion - of the 1500 lines of python+templates i'd written up until then - was very simple and very quick, by virtue of having stuck to some guidelines:

1) for god's sake don't use anything in dtml except dtml-if (which should be a true-false test only), dtml-else, dtml-var (which should be simple variables only) and dtml-in.

DO NOT, under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, use dtml-call or any kind of complex mapping.

2) anything complex is done by a python function, which _explicitly_ calls a variable (an instance of an HTMLFile) manually passing in the REQUEST dictionary and some additional keywords via **kwargs or named parameters:

    contents of index_html_file.dtml:
< html >
< title > <dtml-var "title">
< body > stuff < / body >
< / html >

     def index_html(self, REQUEST):
    """ comment to keep zope happy
    """

        return self.index_dtml_file(self, REQUEST, 
                                title='Hello')

by following these simple rules, i was able to install python-htmltmpl, and quite literally do a global search/replace on dtml-in with TMPL_LOOP, dtml-var with TMPL_VAR - you get the idea.

i've since investigated SQLObject/SQLBuilder, formencode, mod_python and htmltmpl, and ... i can't imagine ever doing, by choice, web programming with anything else.