Extracting Zen Cart Functionality

[ojohnm]

Thanks for the great reply! Let me respond to a couple of points you make:

1) Where you said "Zen Cart is exactly that already", I realize that. The point I was making is that we have our specific implementation of dynamic generation of web pages/content. In a manner our pages are our own unique template system analageous to ZC, and so I was trying to say that it would be a very big deal to 'scrap that' in lieu of ZC template system for our entire site. I'm sure that like us, others have worked very hard on their site technology and don't want to throw it away for a completely different system.

2) I have installed and played with ZC and its templates. However, for me to develop a 'typical' web page of let's say product content, but within my dev framework, it would take me a couple of hours because I know my framework inside and out (I helped build it). In contrast, to produce the same 'page' using ZC's template system, I'm now working in foriegn territory and the same job is going to take 10x longer because I have to do everything ZC's way and figure that out and I'm talking specifically about content generation and presentation.

3) It appears to me that a large portion of ZC's code base is about the templates and generating content, compared to the amount of code that actually represents the functionalities of 'shopping'. Furthermore, alot of that code is to accomodate those who do not know how to develop web content themselves and so they need the "put your header here and place your message there' kind of thing. Sort of like a wyswig html editor for those who can't write xml themselves. In a way ZC becomes kind of a web site development IDE for those who want a 'store' but can't develop web sites. This versus providing pre-built shopping cart functionality and support libs for those who do build their own sites. I want the latter.

Bottom line: I've reviewed enough of ZC to know that it is totally possible to seperate these layers and I could even do it given I had enough time (which of course I don't). ZC could have been developed this way if the vision for that would have been there from the beginning. It sounds to me by your last comment, that maybe there is some vision for this in the future releases. So maybe we could start some official ZC wiki topic and/or discussion forum all about this. I know I would be happy to help and so would others.

Thanks again DrByte, your points were a big help!