partial evaluation / removing directives

Hi all,
I'm working with some velocity files where I want to partially evaluate
them, such that the only things actually evaluated are #parse (includes of
other velocity templates in the same directory) and  $references to a
resourceBundle variable passed in the context map.  In essence, all this is
doing is combining a number of velocity files into one master velocity
file, and localizing any resource bundle references to a given locale. All
the main velocity directives in the velocity file(s) should be left
unevaluated-   #set, #ifelse, #foreach etc. This way, the result could be
redistributed and modified specific to a particular locale, with just one
file instead of n based on the #parse structure.

Up till now, I've been doing this in a somewhat roundabout way:
1. setting strict escape property to true
2. pre-processing the velocity templates by regexp replacing all instances
of #if / #else/ #elseif/ #end / #foreach / #define / #break / #stop  #set /
#evaluate with  \\#{$1}
This adds a an escape character before each of these directives, and I can
then call mergeTemplate on the result.  It works OK, sometimes, but I still
run into some parsing issues now and again (eg not a robust solution). It
also seems kind of heavy handed to have to preprocess these files using a
regular expression and saving them before velocity gets a handle on them.
It would even be a bit better if I could do this by reading them in and
doing the rgexp in-memory rather than on the saved files, then using
evaluate instead of mergeTemplate. But I assume that would cause problems
for the #parse directives.

I know velocity added a removeDirective() method in 1.6.2 which seems like
it should be perfect for me - I could simply rip out all the directives but
#parse.  However, I tried the and it seems that it only works for certain
directives, eg  #foreach, #include, etc.  More basic directives like #if
and #elseif are not in the list of runtimedirectives, or even represented
as Directive objects, so removing them doesn't work.

Any suggestions on the best way to proceed with this? Would it be easy to
change a few velocity files locally, recompile and get this behavior? Or is
it sufficiently complex removing all these more basic directives that I'm
better off continuing to try some kind of  preprocessing/ escaping?

thanks,
Pete