The Pitch

• Python is easy to learn for both new programmers and experts alike
• senior programmer types like it too (vs. say tcl)
• extensible with C/C++ for speed and/or linkage to C/C++ libraries via static *or* dynamic linking

• Relatively simple extension API
• can easily handle authentication, url building/parsing and custom tags

• more than just "include"
• not just another ASP/JSP like thing
• a powerful templating language
• encouraged by caching options (see below)
• component output can be either HTML or Python objects
• can write components in either STML or Python
• can also call components on other skunk servers

• makes multi-lingual sites much easier
• support variable substitution in messages

• templates are compiled to Python bytecode
• extensive caching (to disk and optionally memory) of:
  • compiled forms of templates
  • digested message catalogs
  • output of components
  • python modules and python components
• cache *is* sharable between machines if using a shared filesystem! (can be more than one shared filesystem for speed, redundancy and flexibility)
• caching is flexible and as finite as your disk space
• components can be rendered after the response is sent if a slightly stale version is available --- resulting in better response times

• extensive documentation available in HTML, PostScript, PDF & text (ok, not yet, but getting there fast)
• have automatic documentation tools to generate documentation for STML templates and python modules (python components coming soon) as well as tools for writing manuals.