=============================================
Background: how grok.View and macros interact
=============================================

The template attribute and the macro shortcut convention
--------------------------------------------------------

In the case of ``grok.View`` views, they subclass the Zope 3 ``BrowserPage``
objects which provide an attribute ``template``, which is the associated page
template. The associated page template in turn has got an attribute ``macros``,
which is a dictionary containing all the macros defined in the page template
with their names as keys (or ``None``).

This means, that you can also reference a macro of a ``grok.View`` using::

     context/<view-name>/template/macros/<macro-name>

Grok shortens this path for you by mapping the ``macros`` dictionary keys to
the associated ``grok.View``. If you define a macro ``mymacro`` in a template
associated with a ``grok.View`` called ``myview``, this view will map
``mymacro`` as an attribute, so that you can ask for the attribute ``mymacro``
of the *view*, where as it is in fact an attribute of the associated template.

Such, you can write in short for the above pattern::

      context/<view-name>/macros/<macro-name>

View names always start with the 'eyes' (``@@``) which is a shortcut
for ``++view++<view-name>``.