Feedback Needed! Changing how Cheetah handles imports

Since this issue has come up (see thread started by Martin Skott) with
regards to how newer versions of Cheetah are handling the #import
statement.

In CVS versions of Cheetah (i.e. v2.0.1 and earlier), all #import
directives were collected and *moved* to the top of the generated Python
code for the template. This means things like this:

	#import sys
	## This is a crazy template
	#set $foo = 'bar'
	#import cjson

	#def method()
		#import simplejson
		#return simplejson.dumps({'foo' : 'bar'})
	#end def

Generates code like this:

	import sys
	import cjson
	import simplejson

	class test(Template):
		def writeBody(self):
			## This is a crazy template
			foo = 'bar'

		def method(self):
			return simplejson.dumps({'foo' : 'bar'})


In Cheetah v2.1.xx this behavior has been changed to support proper
inline imports (I think the "magic global import namespace" is a bad
idea and restricts the power of what you can do within Cheetah)

The code above would generate something like this instead:

	import sys

	class test(Template):
		def writeBody(self):
			## This is a crazy template
			foo = 'bar'
			import cjson

		def method(self):
			import simplejson
			return simplejson.dumps({'foo' : 'bar'})



There are a couple things at play here, firstly anything outside of a
defined function, effectively falls into the "default method" which is
writeBody(). Secondly I think it's important to support inline imports
the same way Cheetah supports generate scoping of variables. 


I think the only solution we have is to use a compile-time setting for
this, it's quite the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario.

The decision to be made between "us" as the community is which we want
to be the *default* behavior:
	1: Non-scoping import behavior (2.0.1 and earlier)
	2: Scoping/inline import behavior.(2.1.0 and later)


My personal vote is for #2 being the default behavior since it follows
Python importing semantics closely (we also have updated our templates
at Slide to avoid the issue Martin Skott describes). 


What say ye all? :)

-- 
-R. Tyler Ballance
Slide, Inc.

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