Mention direct_to_template as an alternate shortcut when wanting RequestContext

[Chris Beaven]

Currently the docs suggest passing a RequestContext instance to the render_to_response() shortcut. But that means also importing RequestContext which makes it a bit less "short" and the actual "cut" less concise.

Perhaps we could mention using the simple generic view direct_to_template() as an alternate shortcut?

[James Bennett]

I'd be inclined not to do this because they're really not the same thing; if you just want to render a template, use direct_to_template. But if you want to do more, writing a wrapper view which looks stuff up and calls direct_to_template with a dictionary of variables is probably more work than just writing a view which uses RequestContext to do the same thing.

[James Bennett]

And on further reflection, I'm going to stand by the above comment and mark this "wontfix"; direct_to_template really isn't appropriate for a case where you just want to get a RequestContext in your view (since in either case you have to import something and change the way your view function returns).